How many metric tons of soybeans did the US export to China in 2024?
Executive summary
The United States exported roughly 26.8–27.0 million metric tons of soybeans to China in 2024, a figure reported across multiple U.S. agricultural and trade analyses [1][2]. That volume represented about half of U.S. soybean exports by value in 2024 and made China the dominant single-country buyer that year, with exports worth roughly $12.5–$12.6 billion [3][4].
1. The headline figure: what the data say
U.S. and independent agricultural analysts converge on a China-bound soybean volume for 2024 in the high-20s of millions of metric tons: farmdoc daily cites 26.8 million metric tons for 2024 [1], while regional reporting in Iowa describes it as “nearly 27 million metric tons” [2]; both are consistent with contemporaneous USDA and trade-statistics-based reporting that placed China as the single largest destination for U.S. soy in 2024 [4][3].
2. How those numbers are reported and converted
Media and industry reporting sometimes uses bushels or dollar values instead of metric tons—an important source of confusion—because U.S. statistics often list soy exports in bushels while international trade uses metric tons; one persistent reference point is 985 million bushels of U.S. soy exported to China in 2024 cited by the American Farm Bureau Federation narrative, which lines up with the ~26.8–27.0 million metric-ton estimate when converted using standard bushel-to-metric-ton factors [5]. Financial measures reinforce the scale: China purchased roughly $12.5–$12.6 billion of U.S. soybeans in 2024, accounting for more than half the value of U.S. soybean exports that year [3][4].
3. Context: market share, trends, and why 2024 mattered
That near-27-million-ton level in 2024 was both a continuation of China’s outsized role and a pivot point: although China bought about half of U.S. soy exports by value in 2024, its share of China’s overall soybean imports had been declining in recent years as Beijing diversified suppliers—U.S. market share of Chinese imports fell from around 41 percent in 2016 to about 20–27 percent by 2024 in different analyses—while Brazil and Argentina expanded sales to China [6][7][8]. Multiple sources emphasize 2024 as the last full year before the trade disruptions and tariff-driven pauses of 2025 that dramatically reduced shipments in later months [5][7].
4. Implications and alternate interpretations in reporting
Reporting frames differ: industry groups and farm-state outlets stress the magnitude of the 2024 China market for U.S. producers [2][4], while analysts warn the long-term picture shows structural loss of share to South American suppliers—interpretations that are not mutually exclusive but reflect differing agendas (supporting domestic farmers vs. signaling structural market shifts) and reliance on overlapping datasets [8][1]. Some pieces use dollar-value or bushel figures to underline economic impact [9][3], which can exaggerate perceived change if readers don’t track unit conversions.
5. Data caveats and what the sources do not resolve
Public reporting and industry summaries provide consistent 2024 totals around 26.8–27 million metric tons, but the assembled sources do not include a direct USDA table in the snippets provided here to let this account reproduce the raw weekly export tallies; therefore the conclusion rests on multiple secondary and primary-analyst reports (farmdoc, Reuters, Iowa reporting, USDA-linked summaries) that cite USDA and customs data [1][7][2]. If precise, document-level verification is required—for example a USDA FAS database extract—those primary datasets should be consulted directly; the present reporting does not supply that raw file in full [10].