Soybean shipments from Brazil are suddenly in limbo because Chinese customs inspectors forced their Brazilian counterparts to adopt a new phytosanitary control system. The disruption comes during Brazil's peak month for soybean shipments bound for China. Is the timing coincidental, or is it another attempt to use phytosanitary concerns to "manage" the flow of imports?
Earlier this week, a Latin American Cargill executive told a Reuters correspondent that Brazilian inspectors had adopted a new inspection system this month. Cargill had stopped buying Brazilian soybeans for shipment to China until they could figure out how to work with the new system.
News media have reported that Brazil's agriculture ministry had tightened inspections at the behest of Chinese customs regulators based on reports that inspectors they found problems such as presence of insects, beans coated with pesticides or fungicides, weed seeds, and heat damage in Brazilian beans arriving at the Chinese border. They do not cite concerns with moisture or mold related to wet weather during this year's Brazilian harvest.
Chinese authorities have offered no public explanation. News in China about the Brazilian soybean phytosanitary issue appears to be limited to translations of Reuters articles on news sites for the Chinese soybean industry.
The Brazilian soybean phytosanitary issue did not come out of nowhere. In November 2025, China suspended 5 Brazilian soybean export facilities, including 2 owned by Cargill, and others owned by Louis Dreyfuss, CHS Agronegocio, and 3Tentos. The source of the report was a Brazilian newspaper which cited discovery of wheat seeds coated with pesticides in a single soybean cargo for the suspension. China had suspended 4 Brazilian soybean exporters last year, but they were reinstated during Brazilian President Lula's visit to China last April (just as the trade war with the U.S. was heating up).
China's suspension of imports and imposition of phytosanitary measures on trading partners is not new.
In a similar case in 2017, Chinese customs authorities pressured USDA to address weed seeds and foreign matter in U.S. soybean shipments, a dispute resolved by adding a declaration on inspection certificates when weed seeds and foreign matter exceeded 1% of the shipment. A U.S. soybean industry official promised the new arrangement would be implemented for the next soybean harvest, but China stopped buying U.S. soybeans in July 2018 after the first trade U.S.-China trade war started.
Another dispute shortly after China joined the WTO was summarized by a 2003 news media report: "China is refusing to import soybeans from the United States and Argentina claiming they contain the fungus phytophtera, a move some see as a protectionist ploy."
This month's news is probably an example of China seeking greater influence as a rule-maker rather than a rule-follower in international trade. China is eager to replace established rules, standards and procedures created by the U.S. with new "scientific" ones made up by China. This is China's quest for influence over rules and pricing (so-called 话语权).
It may be a sign that Chinese authorities have quietly decided the pace of soybean imports from Brazil got out of control last year. "Controlling the pace and timing of imports" is one of the mantras of China's agricultural trade policy. They might be looking to slow the pace of imports and divert some Brazilian shipments to other markets to avoid a deluge of imports like they received in May 2025: a record 14 mmt of soybeans that month, of which 12 mmt came from Brazil.
Confusion over Brazil's new China-inspired procedure comes during the peak month for exports of Brazilian soybeans from a record-large harvest. According to Brazil's exporter association, ANEC, soybean exports were under 2.4 mmt in January, 8.9 mmt in February, and exports are projected to surge to 16.47 mmt in March 2026 based on shipment schedules. March 2025 was the peak month for Brazilian soybean exports last year with 15.7 mmt shipped.
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