reuters.com
www.reuters.com

China imported no soybeans from the U.S. in September, the first time since November 2018 that shipments fell to zero, while South American shipments surged from a year earlier, as buyers shunned American cargoes during the ongoing trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    37·
    16 hours ago

    https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2025/1015/soybean-farmers-trump-bailout-china

    Mr. Trump has angered many farmers by providing economic aid for Argentina, which almost immediately responded by suspending its export taxes on soybeans and other goods. That allowed China to buy a large lot of Argentina’s soybeans at a discount, further undercutting U.S. soybean farmers. Farmer sentiment – a measure of how farmers view their financial future – fell last month, reversing all the gains it had made since Mr. Trump’s election last year, according to the Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer Index.

    When America’s soybean exports diminish, farmers in Brazil and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere expand their acreage and grow more soybeans for export, diminishing U.S. farmers’ market share. That’s what happened in Mr. Trump’s first trade war with China in 2018.

    South American farmers are beginning to plant their soybean crop. If there’s no imminent sign of a U.S.-Chinese arrangement over soybeans, then they have more incentive to increase soybean acreage. That’s a long-term threat, Mr. Gerlt says, because once in cultivation, those acres don’t go away.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        161·
        15 hours ago

        farmers…reap what they have sown

        Dammit. I wish I’d come up with that one.

        • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 hours ago

          Actually thinking about the idiom, I wonder if people used to complain a lot about the types or quality of vegetables they grew. It might be purely metaphorical, but I can definitely imagine it, having lived in a place where the owners didn’t box in their zucchini and I had to eat it twice a day for two months. I have a bunch of bomb zucchini recipes, including a self created prize winning quiche recipe (it’s just good homemade crust with an egg and no water, blind baked, then filled with zucchini rounds about 4mm thick sautéed with thin sliced red onions, balsamic vinegar, and rosemary, a little bit of good Parmesan and only two eggs in a 2:1 ratio with heavy cream- I don’t have it more precisely at hand rn), but I couldn’t enjoy it for a decade afterward.

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 hours ago

              I mean, it’s a nice dish that takes some effort, but it’s not molecular gastronomy or anything. I feel weird bragging about an award winning recipe that’s basically a standard zucchini quiche.

              I also forgot to note the red onions, but I initially added the balsamic because I was too lazy to want to wait for them to caramelize on their own and figured a little bit of sweetness would approximate caramelization pretty well. Turns out, zucchini, balsamic, onion and Parmesan work well together.

      • fitgse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        7·
        11 hours ago

        I doubt it. We plant soy beans as part of crop rotation, but don’t actually consume them. We sold them primarily to china to use as feed for animals since china primarily uses its soy beans to feed its population. Due to the trade war, china is purchasing soy from other countries. This means every other year, farmers will not have income unless either the US consumes a lot more soybeans or all the farmers agree to use a different crop rotation that has value. But soy beans are easy to plant, do a great job enriching soil, and can grow in most climates in the us.