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Note: This article was AI-translated from Arabic and is currently under manual review. The author is not responsible for any translation errors. Please refer to the original Arabic text for the most accurate and authoritative information.
In the third article of this series, we saw how China, Brazil and the United States share the trade in whole soybeans. That picture is incomplete without the fourth player: Argentina, a country that mostly does not sell its soybeans as beans, but as oil and meal.
According to the WASDE report released on 10 November 2026, Argentina will crush about 43.5 million tonnes of soybeans in 2026/27, equal to 87% of its crop, and will export only 6.75 million tonnes of beans. In contrast, it will export 30 million tonnes of meal and 6.75 million tonnes of oil, giving it about one third of world soybean meal exports and nearly 45% of world soybean oil exports. In every sense, it is the world's crushing plant.
| Argentina (million tonnes) | 2024/25 | 2025/26 | 2026/27* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soybean production | 51.1 | 49.3 | 50.0 |
| Soybean imports | 6.3 | 7.5 | 6.5 |
| Crush | 43.2 | 42.9 | 43.5 |
| Soybean exports | 7.9 | 9.0 | 6.8 |
| Soybean meal production | 33.5 | 33.1 | 33.5 |
| Soybean meal exports | 29.8 | 29.7 | 30.0 |
| Soybean oil production | 8.6 | 8.6 | 8.7 |
| Soybean oil exports | 7.1 | 6.8 | 6.8 |
| Argentina's share of world meal exports | 35.9% | 34.3% | 33.3% |
| Argentina's share of world soybean oil exports | 46.5% | 43.8% | 44.7% |
* November 2026 projections. Source: WASDE-677 report (Argentina's marketing year adjusted to October–September); shares calculated by Zyot W Dhon.
The table shows the shape of the new season: production stable at 50 million tonnes, crush rising slightly to 43.5 million tonnes, and bean exports down about 25% from the previous season. The November report raised Argentina's soybean exports from 6.45 to 6.75 million tonnes and lowered ending stocks to 23.74 million tonnes.
Argentina's crushing capacity, concentrated along the Paraná River around Rosario, is too large to be filled by the domestic crop alone. The report therefore expects Argentina to import 6.5 million tonnes of soybeans in 2026/27, equal to about 15% of its crush.
These beans come mainly from Paraguay, which exported about 5.9 million tonnes of soybeans in the first half of 2026, 86% of them to Argentina. In the first four months of the year, one in every four tonnes processed by Argentine plants was imported. This helped lift the crush to about 20.3 million tonnes between April and August 2026, up 6% from the same period a year earlier.
Argentine soybeans cannot be understood without export taxes, known locally as "retenciones". The tax stood at 33% on beans and 31% on products until early 2025, before the government of President Javier Milei cut it in stages to 24% on beans and 22.5% on oil and meal from December 2025.
The September 2025 experience shows how sensitive the market is to these taxes. When they were suspended for just three days, exporters registered sales worth more than USD 4.9 billion, including at least twenty cargoes of beans to China and about 300,000 tonnes of soybean oil to India. This partly explains why Argentina's soybean exports rose to about 9 million tonnes in 2025/26.
The next step was set by Decree 423/2026, published in June 2026: the soybean tax will be cut by 0.25 percentage points each month during 2027, then by 0.5 points a month during 2028, reaching 21% by the end of 2027 and 15% by the end of 2028, with a matching cut for oil and meal to about 19.5% and then 14%.
In our reading, this schedule has two opposite effects. On one hand, it raises farmers' net returns and encourages planting. On the other, it may lead them to delay some sales while waiting for a lower tax the following month, which could make the flow of beans to crushers less regular during 2027 and 2028.
The US report puts Argentina's crop at 50 million tonnes, but local estimates diverge sharply. The Rosario Board of Trade expects only 47.8 million tonnes, noting that better corn margins are pulling some area away from soybeans. The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange expects 53.6 million tonnes, with planted area up 1.2% to 17 million hectares, supported by lower export taxes and better prices.
This 5.8-million-tonne gap between the two local estimates is roughly equal to everything Argentina imports in beans in a full year. Weather during the southern summer will decide it, as planting starts in October and the crop is harvested between April and June.
More than 60% of Argentina's soybean oil exports go to India. Argentina set a monthly record of 742,000 tonnes in June 2026, and between July and September the three major exporters (Argentina, Brazil and the United States) shipped a record 2.77 million tonnes, 58% of which went to India and Nepal.
The WASDE report, however, paints a calmer picture for the new season. It cuts India's soybean oil imports from 5.6 to 5 million tonnes, about 11%, and expects world soybean oil exports to fall from 15.55 to 15.10 million tonnes. As a result, Argentina's oil exports stay almost flat at 6.75 million tonnes despite higher production, and its ending stocks rise slightly. At the same time, the report raised Brazil's oil exports from 1.70 to 1.90 million tonnes, meaning tougher competition for the same buyer.
The report expects world soybean meal exports to rise by about 3.5 million tonnes to 90.1 million tonnes in 2026/27. But Argentina's part of this increase is only 0.3 million tonnes, against about 2 million tonnes for Brazil and 2.2 million tonnes for the United States.
The US side takes us back to what we discussed in the second article: American plants are crushing more soybeans to meet biofuel demand for oil, leaving a meal surplus that they push onto world markets. As a result, Argentina's share of world meal exports falls from 35.9% in 2024/25 to 33.3% in 2026/27, although it remains the largest single exporter.
In the next article of this series, we move from soybeans to sunflower oil and follow what is happening in the Black Sea region, which produces and exports the largest share of it in the world.
Source: World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE-677), US Department of Agriculture, 10 November 2026; Rosario Board of Trade; Buenos Aires Grains Exchange; USDA Foreign Agricultural Service; Oil World; Valor Soja; Datagro. Calculations and analysis: Zyot W Dhon.