Going into the 2025 harvest season, China had not purchased any new crop beans from the United States, something Dan Bowman with ADM says is unheard of.
“The reason they’re not buying from us is just not our trade policies; it’s the fact that Brazil is just outproducing us and outpricing us, and they have huge room for expansion down there,” shares Bowman. “I’ve heard in the past couple of years they’ve got another 100 million acres that could be expanded down there.”
As China focuses its attention on the Brazilian crop, Grant Strom, Knox County Farmer, says trade is also getting displaced to other places.
“If China is going to take all Brazil’s crop, everybody else that was taking a little bit of that’s going to have to come to the US or someplace else to get that. So some of that is just going to be a moving and shifting thing,” says Strom.
He adds that finding a domestic use for the U.S. crop will help ease the pressure on crop exports.
“If we can figure out more domestic uses for the crop, you go to Brazil, all the cars are on E30, E35, E40 down there. There’s no reason that we can’t be doing that domestically too,” shares Strom. There’s even talk that Brazil may have to import ethanol because they’re using so much of it in their vehicle fleet.”
In a typical year, China buys more than half of U.S. soybean exports; however, from January through August, Brazil set a record for shipments to China.
