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Soybean export demand to jump
There’s anticipated to be significant growth in the next decade in international demand for soybeans. Economic forecasts indicate soybean exports will jump to 67 percent of U.S. production by 2021, according to Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council.
“And that’s not to say that consumption in this country would be going down by that time,” said Sutter, during an interview with Brownfield this week, at an event in Quincy, Illinois. “Consumption here would be flat to up slightly; that seems to fit with what we would expect.”
Sutter characterizes our current export market as important because he says there seems to be a delicate balance between domestic and international demand and the supply of soybeans.
“We can’t take this for granted,” he said, “we have to be careful, but we seem to be in a sweet spot in that the world wants what we have to produce.”
Even though anticipated growth is significant, Sutter says the current export figure – 56 percent of U.S. production – is, in itself impressive.
“And when I use that statistic I’m not actually including the meat that gets exported, because certainly there’s an important part of our meat industry in terms of pork, poultry, others that also get exported,” said Sutter, “and that would add another between 5 and ten percent, probably, to that number.”
Sutter says most of that growth is because of increased livestock feed demand in Asia. Improving economies and lifestyles in that part of the world have resulted in growing demand for meat in people’s diets. Another area of anticipated demand growth for U.S. soybean meal is in aquaculture.
Much of the fish raised in aquaculture is produced in Asia, but Sutter said they’re consuming an increasing amount and exporting less. The result, he said, is that an increasing amount of fish consumed in the U.S. is expected to be produced in the Americas “so we think that’s an interesting business opportunity for people to be producing aquaculture to supply the U.S. market in years to come.”
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