Farm visits. Wisconsin soybean farmers, like their counterparts in other states, have been wining and dining purchasing agents from abroad. This is a trade mission from Kazakhstan and Cambodia. U.S. farmers are desperate to offset their total loss of the massive China market due to President Trump’s trade war.

New Minnesota pitches for southeast Asia sales

TYLER, Minn. — Minnesota soybean growers pitched the value of their soybeans to 14 buying agents from southeast Asia. It’s been a Hail Mary attempt to offset the loss of China sales as a result of President Trump’s huge new tariffs on imports of Chinese goods into the United States. The Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council flew farmers from Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to walk the land to witness the current harvest. The hope: To excite these buyers to commit to mass purchases of Minnesota soybeans.  Soybeans are a major part of livestock feed globally. “We’ve got to beat the bushes and utilize these trade teams and show them what a great product the U.S. has,” said Joel Schreurs of the Minnesota Soybean Promotion Council in a Minnesota Star Tribune interview. “The crop at this point is plentiful and relatively cheap: “Now’s the time to buy if you’re a foreign entity.” Seth Naeve, a University of Minnesota agronomist, told the Star Tribune that prospective buyers that Minnesota soils yield soybeans with superior protein content. The focus in hosting the Asians was on what the animal wants,” he said. Minnesota has 26,000 soybean farmers. More than half of their crop is for export. In recent years a quarter of the state’s production went to China. Minnesota farmers planted 7 million acres of soy this year. Suddenly, thanks to Trump, China is buying nothing from Minnesota growers. China instead is buying from Argentina and Brazil.

Glenn Groth, chair of Northern Soy Marketing, which advocates for Minnesota and South Dakota farmers, said the Asian buyers were shown the whole process of Minnesota soy production to understand the supply chain and why Minnesota soybeans have advantages over international competitors.

Joel Schreurs, of the Minnesota Soybean Promotion Council, made a case that the 2025 Minnesota crop almost wholly harvested and plentiful and relatively cheap.

Seth Naeve, a University of Minnesota agronomist praised Northern-grown as “very clean” — low disease, low foreign material and dry — with a superior quality of protein.