How the China-US trade row might pave the way for the soybean Silk Road
Trade threats are giving added urgency to Beijing’s need to find long-term alternative suppliers for one of its key imports
Landlocked Kazakhstan in Central Asia is home to an extraordinarily diverse array of horticulture but there’s one crop coming in for special attention from China.
China is looking to Kazakhstan and other countries along the Silk Road to diversify its sources of soybeans.
China already imports nearly 100 million tonnes of the crop a year, accounting for about 60 per cent of the world’s market. Last year roughly half of those imports came from Brazil and a third from the United States, with suppliers in places like Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan together contributing less than 1 per cent of the total.
Almost all of the soybeans are processed into animal feed in China to satisfy the country’s ever-growing appetite for meat.
With finite room for growth in its small group of suppliers, China has long known it needs to diversify its sources to meet its expanding demand. That need has gained greater urgency in the last year as trade ties with the United States have frayed rapidly under the strain of tariff threats on both sides.
