When an Upstate soybean processing facility abruptly shut down in April, South Carolina leaders mobilized to find a way to save the crop and get it to new markets overseas.
Now, the state’s farmers are facing another potential crisis – a trade war with China that threatens to eliminate a key soybean customer just as this year’s crop is ready for harvest.
“Farmers are frustrated and they’re concerned right now,” said Eva Moore, spokeswoman for the S.C. Department of Agriculture. “Without China, it’s a lot harder to get good prices and negotiate good deals.”
China is historically the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, importing more than half of American farmers’ annual harvest. And soybeans are America’s biggest export to China, in terms of value. Last year, China bought $12.6 billion worth of soybeans, the New York Times reported.
But in May, China stopped buying U.S. soybeans – the result of a tariff war between that country and the Trump administration. China is instead buying billions of dollars of soybeans from Brazil and Argentina.
“U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice,” Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, said in a written statement. “Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress … (and) cannot survive a prolonged trade war with our largest customer.”
In South Carolina, soybeans are the largest crop by acreage, with most of the growing centered in the Pee Dee region. There were 380,000 acres harvested in 2024 – that’s 13 million bushels worth $138.2 million, according to the state’s agriculture department.
Fitzhugh Bethea, a Dillon County farmer and chairman of the S.C. Soybean Board, said this year’s harvest is expected to be a little below average, with a projected 7% decline. Couple that with soybean prices that have steadily eroded in recent years, and state farmers are worried.
Farmers “can go out of business in a season if they can’t sell their 2025 crop,” Moore said.
Stepping up
South Carolina has rallied to help its soybean farmers in the past.
As trade tensions with China heightened this spring, Archer Daniels Midland suddenly announced it would close a soybean processing facility in Kershaw that had served farmers for half a century.
That left many of the state’s farmers with no way to process soybeans in storage from last year’s crop, and – with China’s refusal to buy the U.S. product – nowhere to ship them if they could be processed.
The S.C. State Ports Authority reacted by partnering with the state’s agriculture department and private businesses to move 3 million bushels of those soybeans through Inland Port Dillon in the following months.
The authority found new markets for the soybeans in Malaysia, Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia. Container shipping giants CMA CGM, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd and Ocean Network Express agreed to move 2,800 cargo containers full of soybeans to those markets, leading to a 35% jump in exports through the inland port.
South Carolina’s inland ports provide rail links to move cargo containers from points away from the coast to and from the Port of Charleston. The authority also has an inland port in Greer.
“We went to some of the ocean carriers who are big players into Dillon and sort of just said, ‘We have a situation in South Carolina where a huge demand for beans is going away – we’ve got a surplus – and could you help us?’,” said Byron Miller, the authority’s chief commercial officer. “And they stepped up. They got involved in pricing and ensuring there was an avenue to get those beans to market.”
Soybeans, grains and agricultural products rank as the third-biggest export commodity from the Port of Charleston, with nearly 90,000 containers measured in 20-foot increments leaving the port for foreign markets each year. Soybeans and grains are the top commodity exported from the inland port in Dillon.
“By working together, we were able to quickly develop new soybean markets and make a real difference for South Carolina farmers,” Hugh Weathers, the state’s agriculture commissioner, said in a written statement.
Uncertain future
With a new soybean crop ready to be harvested in the next couple of months, the state’s agriculture department plans to work with farmers to try to offset impacts from the trade war with China.
The agency plans to hold a “listening call” with growers to get input and “we’re going to see if there’s something more we can do with the port to ease the problem,” Moore said.
The state Department of Agriculture also has a Growing Agribusiness Fund it can tap for initiatives to help soybean farmers. About $9 million of the $40 million legislators put in the fund in 2023 remains available, she said.
China said this week it won’t buy any U.S. soybeans unless what it terms “unreasonable” retaliatory tariffs of 34% are removed by the Trump administration.
Trade talks are continuing, and a top Chinese trade negotiator met with political and business leaders from the U.S. Midwest earlier this week, signaling a breakthrough could be near.
That would be good news for South Carolina, the nation’s 22nd-largest producer of soybeans, and farmers in the Midwest, where the bulk of U.S. soybeans are grown.
In the meantime, however, the state’s soybean farmers are getting ready for harvest with the world’s top buyer boycotting their crop. That could force them to store their harvest to avoid having to sell soybeans at a huge loss.
The stalemate is also spurring talk at the White House of new federal aid to keep farmers afloat, similar to measures President Donald Trump took in 2019 when the trade war began.
On Thursday, Trump indicated a bailout will come from money collected from tariffs.
“We’re going to take some of that tariff money we’ve made, we’re going to give it to our farmers who are for a little while going to be hurting until the tariffs kick in to their benefit,” Trump told reporters. “So, we’re going to make sure our farmers are in great shape because we’re taking in a lot of money.”
He didn’t offer any specifics.
“If there’s not a trade deal, there has to be some kind of relief for farmers,” Moore said.
David Wren has been a business, government and investigative reporter for more than 40 years, most of that time in South Carolina. He previously worked for The Post and Courier covering the Port of Charleston, Boeing and advanced manufacturing for more than a decade.
