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China’s holdout on US new crop beans continues

An ag economist says he’s very concerned about China’s lack of new crop soybean purchases.

“At this point, China has yet to buy one bean for this upcoming marketing year,” said Jim McCormick with AgMarket.Net.

McCormick says early September is the timeframe when U.S. soybean sales typically pick up steam to China.

“As this window starts to close and each week we don’t sell beans to China, it becomes more of a problem for the balance sheet.”

He tells Brownfield there are some fears that Brazil could become China’s preferred supplier of soybeans.

“If this trade war gets ugly and (China) manages to not buy beans from us for a year – what happens a year from now, who knows – but it’s just going to solidify that investment into South America.”

But McCormick says there were some positive signals between the U.S. and China last week.

“There was a Chinese delegation that had stopped over on the way back from Canada,” he said. “There was some optimism in some of the trade that maybe a trade deal could be announced between the U.S. and the Chinese, and then the Chinese would come in and commit to buy some beans.”

Soybean futures began the week under pressure.

INTERVIEW: Jim McCormick with AgMarket.Net