Crops are in the ground, the weather is cooperating, soybean prices are up slightly from 2025, and China — the biggest buyer of U.S. soybean exports — is once again placing orders after a trade agreement ended the country’s purchasing freeze last fall.
But while morale is higher among Tennessee soybean farmers as the 2026 growing season gets under way, the cost to plant crops remains high, and U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows there is still a long way to go before China’s purchases reach pre-trade war levels.
“There have been some positive movements in trade relations with China, specifically with soybeans, that have caused markets to improve over last year,” Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council Executive Director Stefan Maupin said Monday. “However, we are definitely not where we were in years past. For most farmers out there, the big question in front of them is, will it get back?”
Soybeans are Tennessee’s top crop, and a major agricultural product nationwide, covering about 10% of all U.S. farmland. More than 40% of U.S. soybeans are exported, and in recent years, roughly 60% of exported beans went to China.
China stopped purchasing U.S. soybeans in 2025 during tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, leaning instead on soybeans from South American trade partners. China ultimately agreed to purchase 12 million metric tons of soybeans in 2025 and at least 25 million metric tons each year through 2028.
USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Baden said earlier this month that he is confident that China will meet those numbers.
“They have the entire marketing period to meet the 25 million metric ton commitment for this year,” Baden told Brownfield, an agriculture-focused news outlet.
The current marketing period runs from September 2025 to September 2026.
Export sales to China from January through March are up 49% compared to last year, University of Tennessee Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics Andrew Muhammad said.
That’s explained by an increase in sales to China during the off-season in response to the trade agreement, Muhammad said. In other words, China is now buying the excess soybeans that U.S. producers stored in fall 2025, when China halted its usual buys. Typically, China purchases most of their American soybeans in the fall, turning instead to Brazil and Argentina for soybeans during the South American harvest season in the spring.
“But if we look at the accumulated total for the actual marketing year, going back to September, exports to China are still lagging what we did in years past,” he said.
From Sept. 1, 2025 through March, China accounted for less than 30% of U.S. soybean exports — about half of their volume in previous years.
“We won’t really know until the end of this year whether or not China is able to keep up with these commitments,” Muhammad said.
Asked about China’s total soybean purchases lagging behind previous years, a USDA spokesperson stated that President Donald Trump “has made clear he will hold China to its commitments.”
“President Trump executed another historic deal with China after the previous administration refused to hold them accountable to its future purchase of American soybeans, sorghum, beef, and other commodities,” the spokesperson stated.
Long-term outlook for Tennessee soybean farmers still ‘daunting’
"The farmers and everybody with whom they do business feel better about that positive movement in the negotiations, but they’re not naive,” Maupin said of Tennessee soybean farmers. “They know … there is that potential that (China) will not fully buy what they have committed to buying.”
What really matters is whether commodity traders believe that China will fulfill those commitments, Maupin said. Market prices are currently stronger this year, but “the jury is still out on that.”
And despite improved prices compared to 2025, University of Tennessee data predicts that the price of soybeans at average yieldsQA still won’t be high enough for farmers to break even.
“(Farmers) are now in their third year of the question, how much money will they lose on this crop?” Maupin said.
The University of Tennessee estimated total losses of nearly $110 million for soybean farmers last year, on top of multimillion-dollar losses in 2024.
Those who are still farming this year likely made “major adjustments” to try to lower their expenses and input costs as much as possible to weather the financial hardships of the last two years, Maupin said, but trying to just break even is not sustainable, particularly when many farmers depend on financing tied to their property and equipment.
“2025 was an extremely rough year for a Tennessee farmer, between the weather, the input cost, the prices — it was a very, very complicated and frustrating situation for them. So far this year is much better than the previous year, and so with that, the morale is a little better,” Maupin said. “The long-term outlook, it’s daunting.”
Government stockpiling and growing global markets
Muhammad said this type of trade deal also means governments are involved in agricultural markets.
“When you say to China, ‘we need you to buy so many soybeans,’ the only reason they could pull that off is because we’re not talking about capitalistic market purchases, we’re just talking about government stockpiling,” Muhammad said.
While the trade deal may appeal to U.S. producers, “once tensions die down, they’ll just start using what they’ve stockpiled. It almost comes across as a bandaid for a much more serious problem … the trade tensions between the U.S. and China,” he said.
Baden said Trump sets targets in his trade deals, making outcomes measurable. The USDA did not respond to questions about the long-term effectiveness of trade targets.
Maupin said China has been known to stockpile goods and then cease purchasing or put excess goods back out on the world market.
It’s this market instability that encourages farmers to develop relationships with other countries and find domestic uses for soybeans, Maupin said. Commodity farmers pay a percentage of the sale price of their products — called “checkoff dollars” — toward research and new market development.
Baden said that while China is an “important market” for the U.S., Canada and Mexico buy more U.S. agricultural products overall.
“We’re not just focused on China,” he said. “We’re focused on our larger trading partners here in North America, as well as the many other markets that we need to open, because ultimately this is a game of addition. If we focus too much on any one country, we’re not keeping our eye on the overall ball, which is increasing sales worldwide.”
Maupin said representatives from the European Union visited Tennessee last growing season to see if the state’s soybean production meets their sustainability goals. Their feedback was positive, Maupin said.
The U.S. is also looking to develop relationships with nations that could use soybean meal to feed livestock, or as a protein source for human consumption.
The country has exported more soybeans to Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and Japan since September, partially offsetting the decrease in sales to China, Muhammad said.
“At the end of the day, worldwide, the demand for soybeans as an ingredient, mostly in animal feed, remains high, whether it’s in China or Mexico, the EU, or Egypt,” Maupin said.
