Soy Harvest Begins With Farmers in ‘Fight to Survive’
China Hasn’t Booked a Single Shipment From This Year’s Harvest
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A summer-like start to autumn across the heartland means that crop fields are rapidly drying out, forcing farmers to gather crops before plants crumble to the ground.
But China, typically the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans, still hasn’t booked a single shipment of the crop from this year’s harvest. So now, one question looms large: Where will farmers put all those beans?
Experts are warning that growers are facing an inevitable storage crunch. Many will probably run out of space to stockpile crops until demand picks up again. That leaves few options: Resort to piling up mountains of beans on the ground under tarps, where they’re vulnerable to spoilage — or take them to the closest terminal to sell for meager prices.
“We are going to store everything that we can, that our bins will hold,” said Andrew Philips, who raises corn and soybeans in Nebraska. But after that, it’s “trying to fight to survive this year,” he said, citing rising costs for seed, fertilizer, equipment and insurance as commodity prices drag.
Soybeans are typically America’s most-valued agricultural export. Last year, U.S. shipments to China fetched about $5 billion through July. For the same period this year, that figure has dropped by half to $2.5 billion with no shipments on the books for the 2025-26 season, according to the latest data available from the Department of Agriculture. Things haven’t looked this dire since the last time the U.S. and China were snarled in a trade spat.
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This time, markets are already reflecting conditions even worse than the previous dispute.
In North Dakota, the soybean basis — the difference between the local price farmers receive and benchmark futures — hit a record low of $1.50 below the Chicago market, according to a North Dakota State University report. Farmers are getting less than $9 for a bushel even though futures are trading above $10.
“When you have that excess supply, that’s when you have a weaker basis,” said Shawn Arita, associate director of NDSU’s agricultural risk policy center and a former senior economist in the chief economist’s office at USDA.
According to Terrain Ag, crops in North Dakota could be 33% bigger than storage capacity, with the figure for South Dakota at 26% bigger and Nebraska pegged at 15%.
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Because of the government shutdown, USDA data detailing American exports and how much farmers are harvesting is delayed. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated the soy harvest was 38% complete in the week ending Oct. 5.
Concerns about oversupply have been weighing on Chicago soybean futures. Prices dropped 5% in September, the fourth loss in five months. On Oct. 8, futures were up slightly, rising as much as 0.7% in quiet trading.
Philips in Nebraska said he’ll have to sell anything that he can’t store even if the price isn’t ideal.
“We have to take it to town — so they’re going to have to make room for it,” he said.
