Soybean farmers, caught in the middle of a trade war between the world’s two biggest superpowers, are starting to feel the consequences as China uses its crop purchasing power as political leverage.
As China’s economy has improved, the country has sought out more growth-boosting, high-protein soybean to feed its growing number of livestock such as pork and poultry. As the world’s biggest soybean buyer, China last year bought $12.6 billion worth of soybean from the U.S.—accounting for more than half of America’s total exports of the crop, which is its biggest agricultural export.
Yet, this year the Trump Administration’s trade war with China has changed up its soybean calculus.
The world’s second biggest economy usually commits to buying U.S. soybean as early as September at the start of the fall harvest. Thanks in part to tensions with the U.S. and increased tariffs, though, China did not commit, from May until the end of October, to any U.S. soybean purchases, partly relying instead on South American imports, especially from Brazil.
China in recent years has also built up its own soybean production, adding about 9 million acres of the crop and increasing its production by 8.6 million metric tons since 2015, according to the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
As a result, American farmers have faced an undue strain. Caleb Ragland, a ninth-generation farmer from Kentucky and president of the American Soybean Association, said during a congressional hearing in October that the price of farm production, including land costs, seed, and fertilizer, have skyrocketed while agriculture margins continue to fall.
“For soybean farmers, the loss of our largest export market due to trade retaliation by China has made financial problems even worse,” Ragland said. “High production cost and market losses mean soybean farmers are expected to face a loss of around $109 an acre for this year’s crop.”
China ultimately committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybean, down from 22.5 million tons in the prior season, ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in South Korea late last month.
Trump has also promised $12 billion in aid for the affected soybean farmers, which, as a group, were one of his strongest supporters in his return to the White House last year.
Yet, some farmers like Scott Gaffner, an an at-large director of the Illinois Soybean Association, say President Trump’s bailout isn’t enough.
While China has committed to buying 25 million metric tons of soybean for the next three years, U.S. soybeans still face a 13% import tariff imposed by China, making them less appealing than competing supply from South America. In recent years, China has started shifting its buying to Brazil. China imported 71% of its soybeans from Brazil as of 2024, compared to 2% in the late ‘90s, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Gaffner said any further change in China’s soybean buying habits could cause farmers problems for years to come.
“If China starts buying elsewhere, which they are doing now, once they establish those trade routes, it becomes more difficult for them to come back to the U.S. and buy their commodities,” Gaffner told CBS. “Once we lose that, we may never get it back again. And that’s huge.”
