U.S. fights with Brazil for China’s giant soybean market

BEIJING – Just like Brazil got a bigger share The United States, which has shifted Chinese soybean purchases away from American farmers, is trying to win back buyers by emphasizing crop quality.

“Soybean production in North America and soybean production in South America are very different,” Carlos Salinas, general manager for East Asia at the U.S. Soybean Export Council, said in a presentation at the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing on Tuesday.

He compared a number of weather factors, such as rainfall in the 30 days before harvest, between a city in Brazil and a city in the US state of Illinois: 231 millimeters versus 72 mm.

“This affects the condition of the crop. This affects the quality,” he said.

The half-day event, titled “Developing a sustainable and resilient U.S.-China soybean supply chain,” was organized in conjunction with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

“What we’re really encouraging soy buyers to do is to make sure they educate themselves on this to dig deeper,” Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, told CNBC on the sidelines of the event, noting new ways to measure quality and nutrition, especially for animal feed.

American soybeans have become a bargaining chip in the escalation of US-China trade tensions over the past few years. Beijing, the world’s largest soybean importer, has diversified its sources to Brazil and Argentina to ensure food security.

While the U.S. and Brazil accounted for about 40% of China’s soybean imports a decade ago, Brazil began taking a much larger share in 2018 after the first U.S. tariffs imposed on China, according to CNBC calculations of Chinese customs data accessed via Wind Information.

By the first five months of 2026, more than 60% of China’s soybean imports will come from Brazil, 23% from the United States and 10% from Argentina, the data showed.

US soybean exports to China It fell 76 percent last year It fell sharply from its peak to $3.1 billion. $17.9 billion in 2022According to official US figures. At 7.37 million metric tons, USA soybeans It remained America’s largest agricultural export to China last calendar year.

It will take time to persuade Chinese buyers to increase purchases.

Last month, the White House announced that China would purchase at least $17 billion of US agricultural products annually by 2028, after US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. This amount “in addition to soybean intake The commitments he made in October 2025.”

After the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea last fall, the US said China had agreed to purchase at least 25 million metric tons American soybeans in each of the next three years.

China has purchased all of the 12 million tons of American soybeans it agreed to purchase in the marketing year ending August 2026, and nearly all of them have been shipped, Sutter said.

For the next 25 million metric tons, Sutter said purchases started last week.

On June 17 and 18, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said private exporters reported Sale of 132,000 metric tons of soybeans for delivery to China Sales of many more soybeans to unknown destinations were spread over two years in the marketing year ending August 31, 2027. Sutter noted that such unknown destinations often turn out to be China.

There are other signs of a modest recovery.

“Over the last week and a half, the Chinese have committed to buying about a million metric tons of crop that we will start harvesting this September,” Jerry Slocum, director of the United Soybean Board and a Mississippi farmer, told CNBC.

“So we’re seeing the agreement the two presidents made come to fruition,” Slocum said. However, he stated that he did not expect to receive new orders on Tuesday, adding that “there are still some concerns about this.”

Slocum also gave a presentation at Tuesday’s event highlighting the five-generation family farm’s crop rotation and other efforts to maintain soil quality.

US Heartland China Association, Zhengzhou delegation We met in Beijing as well as in Henan Province last week for an agricultural roundtable.

“It’s been a few weeks now that Americans have been on the ground in China, examining the agricultural cooperation that China and the United States once had on a much larger scale,” said Darrell Irwin, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Connecticut who attended the visit.

He said agriculture “isn’t as big of a trade as it was in 2019, when it was down significantly.”

Despite the optimism, U.S. soybeans likely won’t be flowing back to China anytime soon.

Sutter said he expects export volumes to hover around 25 to 30 million metric tons over the next year or two, potentially rising to 40 million metric tons in subsequent years.