Touch the Soil News #1292 (Feature photo – Soybeans – Public Domain)
The largest U.S. soybean customer is China. The trade wars constricted that trade to a point where U.S. soybean stockpiles began growing, prices declined and Midwest farm bankruptcies began rising.
With recent trade tensions going down with China, soybean sales to China have picked up. China just put in an order for 828,000 tonnes of soybeans. This is a volume of soybeans equivalent to 652,000 acres of soybeans. For 2019, estimates are that China will import 123 million metric tonnes. With a global average soybean yield or around 1 metric tonne per acre, China will need to import a volume of soybeans that takes about 123 million acres. That equates to a farm that is roughly two hundred miles wide and 1,000 miles long.
