Brazil’s 2025/26 soybean crop is headed for a record near 6.6 billion bushels (USDA, 2026). Maples (2026) laid out the fundamentals in Southern Ag Today earlier this season. But as the season has unfolded, the key question for U.S. producers is no longer whether Brazil has soybeans. It is whether Brazil can move them to market as smoothly as the headline crop suggests. Three forces suggest otherwise: logistics frictions are disrupting exports at peak season; geopolitical shocks are raising costs across the supply chain; and a structural rise in domestic crushing is keeping more of the crop inside the country.
The first pressure is timing and logistics. Heavy rains in the Center-West slowed harvest while drought in the South trimmed yields. By mid-March, Brazil’s soybean harvest was running 10.6 percentage points behind the same point last year (Figure 1). About 60% of Brazil’s soybeans move to port by truck, yet only about 14% of the country’s roads are paved (Salin, 2025). A phytosanitary dispute with China compounded the problem: Brazil increased inspections on soybeans bound for China at Beijing’s request, Cargill paused exports to China, and longer certification waits raised both demurrage and freight costs (MAPA, 2026).
The second pressure is cost. Brazil imports more than 80% of its fertilizer (ANDA, 2026), and nearly 30% of global fertilizer exports transit the Strait of Hormuz (FAO, 2026). The closure stranded roughly a million metric tons and sent diesel prices surging in rural Brazil. Because the soybean crop was largely fertilized before the shock, the immediate input-cost pressure falls more on safrinha (second crop) corn and on 2026/27 budgets. But freight costs hit now: bunker fuel prices have surged as the Middle East conflict disrupts supply to Singapore, the world’s largest ship-refueling hub (Bloomberg, 2026).
Beneath these disruptions, a structural shift is changing the soybean balance sheet. Domestic crushing is projected to reach a record 2.26 billion bushels, up about 50% from a decade ago (ABIOVE, 2026). Biodiesel policy is one reason. Brazil’s blending mandate has risen from B7 (or 7%) in 2016 to B15 (or 15%) in 2025, and soybean-oil-based biodiesel production has more than doubled, from about 0.8 billion gallons to 1.9 billion as shown in Figure 2 (ANP/ABIOVE, 2026). More beans crushed at home means fewer whole soybeans available for export.
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