Brazilian soybean producers want to keep the recent gains they’ve made in the Chinese market even as U.S.-China relations improve.
Lucas Costa Beber, president of Aprosoja-MT, a trade association representing corn and soybean growers in the state of Matto Grosso, told Agri-Pulse and other reporters that he is anticipating another year of vast exports to China. Beber said that Brazilian producers sent an estimated 86 million tons of soybeans to China in 2025 as Chinese buyers snubbed U.S. beans.
“I believe [exports] will be around the same” in 2026, he said, or even a little higher as Matto Grosso is expecting even more soybean acres next year.
Following the 2018 trade frictions with China, it took U.S. producers two years to regain their export volumes, and exports fell again after 2020. Brazilian soybeans are also cheaper for the Chinese because China maintains a 10% retaliatory tariff on U.S. exports.
Beber said his producers are more than happy to capitalize on U.S.-China trade turmoil.
Lucas Costa Beber, president of Aprosoja-MT. (Agri-Pulse photo)HPAI continues spread
Highly pathogenic avian influenza cases have ramped up in the last month, impacting about 4 million birds across the U.S., according to Agriculture Department data. In December the number of birds infected with bird flu was about 1 million.
Within the last 30 days, the virus has been detected in 14 commercial flocks and 38 backyard flocks, according to USDA data.
Egg layers were hit particularly hard in the last week of January. Operations in Weld County, Colorado, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with about 2.8 million birds between them were affected.
Minnesota’s Tina Smith backs lieutenant governor for Senate seat
In a blow to Minnesota Dermocrat Rep. Angie Craig’s campaign for U.S. Senate, the senator whose seat she’s running for endorsed Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan Monday.
‘We deserve a senator who puts Minnesotans first,” Democratic Sen. Tina Smith said in a post on X that featured a brief announcement with Flanagan. “Someone who sticks up for everybody. Someone who will work every day to build a country where people can afford to live the lives they want to live. That’s why I’m endorsing Peggy Flanagan to be our next United States senator.”
Craig, ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, has raised significantly more money than Flanagan thus far – nearly $6.8 million to Flanagan’s $3.3 million. Both candidates have high-profile endorsements: Flanagan has the backing of Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, for example, while Craig has the support of Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada.
The Democratic primary is in August.
Shutdown politics
The U.S. House is expected to vote today on remaining spending bills for fiscal 2026, including a two-week measure for the Department of Homeland Security, to end the partial government shutdown that began Saturday.
In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said while Republicans agreed on allowing another two weeks to deliberate a full-year DHS funding measure, as Democrats demand putting curbs on immigration agents, the discussion must also be about making it safer for federal law enforcement officers to do their job.
President Donald Trump on Monday urged the House to vote for the funding bill and not slow the process down with any changes. “We will work together in good faith to address the issues that have been raised, but we cannot have another long, pointless and destructive Shutdown that will hurt our Country so badly,” Trump said in an online post. “I hope everyone will vote, YES!”
Waiting for RVO
Biofuel-blending rules from the Environmental Protection Agency are still coming this quarter. That’s according to a Trump administration legal filing on Monday. The final version of long-awaited Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) for 2026 was expected in late December or early January. EPA “continues to expect it will finalize the rulemaking within the first quarter of 2026, i.e., by March 31, 2026,” the agency said.
Renewable fuel producers, farmers and crop processors are nervously waiting to see if EPA sticks to its proposed higher volumes for bio-based diesel. There’s also a major question if the administration moves forward with a plan to discourage using foreign raw materials, such as Chinese cooking oil and Brazilian tallow, to make biofuels, known as the so-called “half-RIN” proposal.
The ag and energy worlds also are waiting for Treasury Department rules for the clean fuel production tax credit that took force last year, known as 45Z.
Continuum Ag founder and CEO Mitchell Hora, a seventh-generation farmer, took to social media on Sunday to relay a message to the White House: If feedstock carbon intensity is left out of 45Z, then Treasury is “ignoring the single largest driver of emissions in the biofuel supply chain, and leaving farmers behind.”
ADM, Alltech launch North American feed company
ADM and Alltech have officially launched Akralos Animal Nutrition as a North American animal feed company, according to an Akralos news release.
The joint venture combines Alltech's U.S.-based Hubbard Feeds and Canada-based Masterfeeds businesses with ADM's U.S. feed operations to create a network of more than 40 feed mills across North America.
"Akralos brings together proven scale, innovation and infrastructure with a deep commitment to service and results," said Akralos Chief Executive Officer Brian Gier.
Headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, Akralos serves livestock, equine, backyard and leisure animal markets with feeds, minerals and supplements.
The partnership builds on a relationship between ADM and Alltech dating to 1980, when ADM became Alltech's first customer.
Final Word
“Some will cry and some will sell handkerchiefs,” says Lucas Costa Beber, president of Brazil’s Aprosoja-MT, a trade association representing corn and soybean growers, reciting a common Brazilian expression on finding opportunity in crises. The longer U.S.-China frictions go on, he added, “the better.”
Correction: Yesterday’s Daybreak misspelled Agriculture Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden’s first name.
Oliver Ward, Steve Davies, Noah Wicks, Bob Ellison, and Kim Chipman contributed to today’s Daybreak
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