soybean crop

A new investigation by FERN and Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Journalism, shows that the EPA "ignored scientists’ warnings and extensive research that showed dicamba would evaporate into the air and ruin crops miles away, according to documents obtained through public records requests and lawsuits. Instead, the EPA’s approval was based on studies by the companies that manufacture dicamba, which independent scientists say were seriously flawed." <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

The U.S. share of the Chinese soybean market shrank during the marketing year that ended Aug. 31 and, with the trade war underway, shipments are anemic in the new sales year, says the USDA: "A large pullback in Chinese demand for U.S. soybeans appears likely to continue well into 2918/19."

Already-bulging U.S. corn and soybean stockpiles are much larger than expected, said a USDA report, compounding the effects of a trade war and bumper crops on the farm economy. Farm income this year is forecast to be the lowest since 2006.

As a consequence of the Sino-U.S. trade war, Brazil is likely to ship nearly 60 million tonnes of soybeans to China this calendar year, a 9-percent increase from 2017, say USDA analysts. While the United States is effectively shut out of China because of high tariffs, "U.S. trade opportunities for markets outside of China would rise by nearly 13 million tonnes in the coming (trade) year, compared to 2016/17," according to the monthly Oilseeds: World Markets and Trade report.

Stung by a trade war with China, ordinarily the purchaser of one-third of the U.S. soybean crop, farmers will switch decisively to corn in 2019, reinstating it as the most widely grown crop in the country, according to a Farm Futures survey of growers.

With commodity prices dropping and farm income projected to plummet, America’s farmers are growing increasingly anxious over the lack of specifics about how much money they’re going to get, and when they’re going to get it, from President Trump’s $12-billion bailout, reports The Wall Street Journal.

A class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. district court in St. Louis says Monsanto and BASF genetically engineered dicamba-resistant crops knowing the weedkiller was likely to harm neighboring crops, and that "everything they did and failed to do increased the risk," reports Harvest Public Media.

One of the world's largest grain companies warned of a "skinny export season" for U.S. soybeans and an intergovernmental body said the United States might need to seek new markets for its cotton due to President Trump's trade war with China. Meanwhile, the Trump administration threatened on Wednesday to put 25-percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports as leverage for reform.

After a decade of robust growth, world production of soybeans will grow at a much slower rate of 1.5 percent annually in the years ahead, says two UN agencies in their annual Agricultural Outlook. Brazil, the longtime No. 2 to the United States in soybeans, will reach parity with America, said the report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

U.S. farmers planted nearly 2 million more acres of corn and soybeans than they planned in late winter, but soybeans, for the first time in 35 years, will be the most widely grown crop in the country, said the USDA's annual Acreage report. The soybean harvest could be the second-largest ever and corn the third-largest, assuming normal weather and yields.

Farmers are expected to plant an estimated 86.5 million acres of soybeans this year, up 3 percent from last year, and dial back their corn acreage by 5 percent and their wheat acreage by 4 percent, according to the USDA’s annual Prospective Plantings report, released Thursday.