Soybeans
CME Group - CBOT
The oilseed superpower crop: grown in the Americas, crushed everywhere, and bought above all by China.
Top Producers
share of 2025/26 production
Top Consumers
share of 2025/26 consumption (crush plus food use)
Main Uses
global soybean use by category, 2025/26 (USDA)
Top Exporters
share of 2025/26 exports
Top Importers
share of 2025/26 imports
Global production
roughly 425 million tonnes
as of 2025
Brazilian crop
roughly 170 million tonnes, the largest ever
as of 2025
Chinese imports
record 111.8 million tonnes in calendar 2025
as of 2025
All-time futures high
$17.89 per bushel (September 2012)
as of 2025
Share of world oilseed output
roughly 60 percent
as of 2025
Soybeans are the world's dominant oilseed, accounting for roughly 60 percent of global oilseed production, and the crop sits at the center of the most concentrated trade flow in agriculture: the Americas grow it and China buys it. Brazil harvested a record crop of roughly 170 million tonnes in 2025 and has pulled far ahead of the United States (roughly 118 million tonnes) as both the largest producer and the largest exporter. Argentina, the number three grower, crushes most of its beans domestically and exports the products instead. China imports roughly 110 million tonnes a year, a record 111.8 million tonnes in calendar 2025, more than 60 percent of all soybeans crossing borders, to feed the world's largest hog herd and cooking-oil market.
That concentration makes soybeans the most geopolitically exposed grain contract. The 2018 US-China trade war put tariffs on US beans and handed Brazil permanent market share; renewed trade hostilities in 2025 saw Chinese buyers boycott the US harvest for months until the trade framework agreed at the Trump-Xi meeting of October 30, 2025 restored purchases late in the year. The pattern repeats: every round of US-China friction shows up within days in the Gulf export basis and the Brazilian premium. Further back, the market's formative shock was the opposite trade: in June 1973 the Nixon administration briefly embargoed US soybean exports to fight food inflation, an act Japan never forgot and a key reason Japanese capital financed the opening of Brazil's cerrado to soybean farming in the decades that followed.
Soybeans rarely trade alone. Crushers buy beans and sell meal and oil, so the bean price is arbitrage-linked to its two products through the crush spread, and speculative flows move along the complex. The modern demand story is on the oil side: US renewable diesel capacity rerated soybean oil between 2021 and 2024 and pulled crush capacity investment with it, expanding US crush and changing the export mix from beans toward meal. November beans against July beans frames the old-crop/new-crop battle, and the southern hemisphere harvest in February and March gives the market a second annual weather cycle in Mato Grosso and the Argentine Pampas.
How It Trades
| Venue | CME Group - Chicago Board of Trade |
| Benchmark contract | CBOT Soybean futures (S, electronic ZS) |
| Contract size | 5,000 bushels (roughly 136 tonnes) |
| Price terms | US cents per bushel |
| Settlement | Physical delivery via shipping certificates on the Illinois waterway |
| Typical curve | Carrying charge in surplus; severe old-crop/new-crop inversions when Chinese demand meets a short crop, as in 2012 |
| Liquidity | Second only to corn among ag futures; roughly 200,000 contracts a day with deep options markets |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global futures volume, 2025
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- Brazil: roughly 170 million tonnes, the largest producer and exporter
- United States: roughly 118 million tonnes
- Argentina: roughly 50 million tonnes, mostly crushed domestically
- China: roughly 20 million tonnes
- Paraguay: roughly 10 million tonnes
The two hemispheres alternate: US planting in May, harvest in October; Brazilian planting in October, harvest in February. Brazil's crop has more than doubled since 2010 on cerrado expansion.
Top consumers
- China: roughly 110 million tonnes of imports a year (record 111.8 million in calendar 2025), over 60 percent of world trade
- United States (domestic crush)
- Brazil and Argentina (domestic crush)
- European Union
Major uses
- Crushing into soybean meal for animal feed, roughly 80 percent of the bean by weight
- Crushing into soybean oil for food and increasingly renewable diesel
- Direct food uses (tofu, soy milk) mainly in Asia
Fifty Years of Genetic Advances
| Era | Advance | How it changed the field |
|---|---|---|
| 1970s-1980s | Conventional public and private breeding | Maturity-group selection spread soybeans from the Midwest into the South and, via Japanese-financed cultivars, into Brazil's cerrado. |
| 1996 | Roundup Ready (glyphosate tolerance) | Monsanto launched the first major Roundup Ready crop; growers adopted it so fast it neared 90 percent of US acres within a decade. |
| Roughly 2009 | Roundup Ready 2 Yield | A second-generation glyphosate event added a yield gain on top of the herbicide trait as the original patent neared expiry. |
| Roughly 2010 onward | Glyphosate-resistant weeds | Palmer amaranth and waterhemp broke glyphosate-only programs, creating demand for new herbicide-tolerance systems. |
| Roughly 2016 | Xtend (dicamba tolerance) | Monsanto/Bayer Roundup Ready 2 Xtend tolerated dicamba; off-target drift damage to neighbors triggered years of litigation and use restrictions. |
| Roughly 2019 | Enlist E3 (2,4-D tolerance) | Corteva Enlist E3 tolerates 2,4-D choline, glyphosate, and glufosinate, and took major share from Xtend as the cleaner drift profile. |
| 2020s | High-oleic and gene-edited beans | High-oleic varieties target the renewable-diesel and food-oil market; CRISPR edits pursue yield and protein without foreign genes. |
Soybeans were the first major crop to go nearly fully transgenic in the US; herbicide tolerance, not insect resistance, has driven the trait wars.
US Average Yield: Soybeans
bushels per acre; USDA records begin in 1924; yields have roughly tripled since the 1940s, from the high teens to above 50 bushels per acre. Source: USDA NASS, Crop Production Historical Track Records (April 2026)
What Moves the Price
- US-China trade relations and Chinese buying pace, the single largest demand variable
- Brazilian and Argentine growing-season weather (October through March), increasingly the dominant supply story
- US Midwest summer weather, especially August pod-fill rainfall
- The crush margin and renewable-diesel-driven oil demand pulling beans through the pipeline
- Monthly WASDE balance sheets and quarterly US stocks and acreage reports
- The Brazilian real: a weak real accelerates farmer selling and undercuts US export offers
- South American logistics: trucking strikes, Amazon river levels, port congestion
Moments That Made the Market
1936
CBOT lists soybean futures as the US crop expands beyond a forage curiosity.
1973
The Nixon soybean embargo halts US exports; Japan responds by bankrolling Brazilian cerrado agriculture.
1977-1980
The Hunt family's "beans in the teens" episode draws CFTC action for exceeding position limits.
2003-2004
China's arrival as a structural mega-importer drives the first China-led bean bull market.
2012
US drought sends soybeans to the all-time record of $17.89 per bushel.
2018
The US-China trade war puts a 25 percent Chinese tariff on US beans; Brazil captures lasting market share.
2025
China boycotts the US harvest for months amid renewed trade conflict, then resumes buying under a framework deal.
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- Brazil overtook the US decisively in both production and exports; the marginal bean now comes from Mato Grosso, not Iowa.
- China's imports roughly doubled from 2010 levels to over 100 million tonnes a year, concentrating demand risk in one buyer.
- Renewable diesel turned the crush from a meal-driven business into an oil-driven one and triggered a US crush-capacity build-out.
- Trade policy became a recurring price driver: 2018 and 2025 both saw Chinese boycotts of US beans.
- Position data, satellite crop monitoring, and real-time vessel tracking stripped much of the old informational edge from the trade houses.