Key Insights
➤ The October 2026 NDSU Agricultural Trade Monitor is now available. This month’s report examines where U.S. soybean meal is being sold, where further export growth could come from, and how transportation costs affect U.S. competitiveness as crushing capacity expands.
➤ U.S. soybean meal exports are at records, and the U.S. share of world trade is climbing. Meal exports, which held at 10 to 13 million tons a year for a decade, reached a record 18.6 million tons in 2025/26 and are projected at 20.6 million in 2026/27, two-thirds more than in 2020/21. Over the same period, the U.S. share of world meal exports has risen from 18 percent to a projected 23 percent.
➤ The U.S. has kept its hold on its core markets. The Philippines and Colombia, which take about 40 percent of U.S. bulk shipments, each added about one million tons of imports over the past decade, and the U.S. supplied most of that growth.
➤ The biggest opportunity lies in large markets where the U.S. share is still small. The EU, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand import about 34 million tons a year, and the U.S. supplies 1 to 11 percent of each, so every point of share gained there is worth about 340,000 tons. Vietnam, about twice the size of the Philippine market, is the largest opening on the Pacific Northwest route. Brazil has supplied most of the recent growth in South and Southeast Asia, and Argentina most of Vietnam’s.
➤ Plains plants have a cost edge into Asia through the Pacific Northwest. Ocean freight to Japan from the Pacific Northwest averaged $33 a ton over the past year, about half the $63 rate from the Gulf. From Hastings, Nebraska, meal reaches Japan for $93 a ton through the Pacific Northwest, $34 less than through the Gulf. U.S. Gulf meal has also commanded a premium of $13 to $41 a ton over Argentine meal in every marketing year since 2021/22.
➤ Thailand’s trade framework with the U.S. names soybean meal. Announced in October 2025, it lists soybean meal among about $2.6 billion a year of planned agricultural purchases, in a market that imports about 3 million tons of meal a year.
➤ More meal is on the way for export markets. U.S. plants can now crush 8.6 million bushels of soybeans a day, and projects under construction and announced could add another 1.1 million, as much as the nine plants opened in 2023–25. Seven of those nine plants are in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, where livestock feeding uses about one-tenth of the meal the region’s plants can produce. Demand for soybean oil in biofuels keeps the crush running, and export markets are projected to take most of the added meal.
Recommended Citation: Wang, M., Arita, S., and Steinbach, S. (2026). U.S. Soybean Meal Exports After the Crush Expansion: Markets, Routes, and Competitiveness. NDSU Agricultural Trade Monitor 2026-10. Agricultural Risk Policy Center, North Dakota State University. October 27, 2026. https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.415921