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Soybeans from the United States are once again eligible to enter South Africa. After a mid-summer drought that caused a 35 percent drop in production, South Africa needs to import soybeans to supplement domestic production and maintain crushing demand.

The Black Sea region is a significant supplier of agricultural commodities to the world. Over the past year, global grain and oilseed markets have been roiled by the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine.

South Africa has experienced an upsurge in oilseed plantings over the past 20 years with a near nine-fold expansion in soybean area. Post foresees that the positive trend in soybean plantings will continue in marketing year 2023/24 with area and oilseed production reaching historically high level of 1.8 million hectares and 3.6 million metric tons, respectively.

A number of factors have converged over the last 18 months to send global agricultural commodity prices to near-record levels. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the potential loss of Ukrainian exports – was the latest development to push commodity prices higher.

South Africa experienced an upward trend in oilseed production (soybeans and sunflower seeds) driven largely by rising oilseed prices, higher yielding cultivars, and a local demand-pull from investments in new oilseed processing plants.

A package of export restricting measures aimed at the oilseeds market is expected to dampen the trend of increasing oilseed production in Russia.

The Russian Federation recently extended the waiver on a previously established ban of imports of some GE soybeans and soybean meal without state registration to January 1, 2022.

Post predicts that South Africa’s positive trend in soybean plantings will continue in the 2021/22 MY in line increased local crushing capacity.

South Africa is continuing to experiencing a positive trend in the area planted with summer rainfall field crops during the past two decades.

On June 2, 2020, the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) issued EEC Collegium Decision No. 71, amending its temporary ban on exports of some food products from the EAEU to exclude soybeans...

On April 29, 2020, the Russian Ministry of Agriculture provided explanations to the industry and related associations on imports of genetically engineered (GE) soybeans and soybean meal...

On April 16, 2020, the government of the Russian Federation signed Decree # 520, which says that for the period April 20, 2020 through January 1, 2021, imports of genetically engineered soybeans...