Are there different grades of soybean?
The most common use is crush the beans, and collect the oil feeding the rest to pigs. If you read the ingredients at the grocery store, soy bean oil comes up a lot. Soy bean oil is also often used in diesel engines after processing.
Edamame is limited to special varieties that are harvested before ripening, which isn't the soybeans those supplanting wheat will be growing. You're probably thinking of tofu, natto, or something in that vein.
or tofu, soy sauce, miso, natto, tianmianjiang, a thousand other things made from soybeans
Not just technically. It is a relatively common food. A fair bit of it is crushed (i.e. turned into cooking oil). But it is also a product used in a number of processed foods, tofu, etc. Granted, it does seem to be eaten less commonly in the USA, but is more often used in Asian cuisines.
> Are there different grades of soybean?
All crops have different grades. Poor weather conditions is the most likely reason for a downgrade.
It's not the drought per se, it's input costs. Farmers are favouring crops that need less nitrogen and potassium.
Commodities have responded accordingly.
A year ago China stopped buying soybeans from the US is seems ("China Bought $12.6 Billion in U.S. Soybeans Last Year. Now, It’s $0." - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/business/china-soybean-sa...), was that resumed, or who are all these new soybeans going to? Is it all for national use instead of export?
But make no mistake, it has caused problems for farmers.
The report from my small hometown farmers is that everything, except for beef, is down right now while the prices of inputs like fertilizer are high. Some of the farmers in my hometown have already sold their land to megacorp farmers in response because they simply can't survive.
On reddit, some farmers have cited 1 to 1 and 1/2 years of storage. [1]
I suspect that a large portion of these soybeans will be stored with the hope that the market gets better in the future (I've never farmed soybeans. We did wheat and hay). Potatoes and apples are the same way.
For Potatoes, they'll measure for hotspots throughout the year to make sure there's not rotting going on in the core, but assuming that doesn't happen, they can be stored for a very long time in giant potato piles. Hay is weird. Fermentation is actually a desirable thing because it releases nutrients (and the cows LOVE it). It makes storage super easy. I've had multi-year old hay bales that we've fed to cows.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/farming/comments/113t3nx/how_long_c...
But who? Compared to 2024, 2025 had almost half soybean exports it seems (https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/soybeans), I'm guessing most of the difference was China basically stopped buying soybeans.
But it's a huge difference, yet production seems to be ramping up? I don't understand why they'd do that when the exports are going down?
And the chart you linked appears that exports for non-china countries is basically static.
Were I to guess what's going on, but we'll see when the 2026 data comes in, is that soy farmers are likely storing a good portion of their bean harvest. Some will still have contracts that keep them farming. I suspect that many have switched over to other crops.
On the margins. However most farmers consider their soil health and long term plans. All good farmers (especially the mega corps) will intentionally plant most crops not based on what they expect out of the market next year, but what their soil needs. Most fields will not produce well if you don't consider what was grown on it last year and in turn what you want to produce next year. A few fields (millions of acres worth, but still only a few) there are options and those will adjust, but for the vast majority you have to follow a long term plan or your soil will fail and bankrupt you long term. Even the fields that do have options, it is just this year, and next they will have to return to a long term plan with no option. That where I live you have go [corn, corn, soybeans] or [corn, soybeans, corn], but [corn, corn, corn] is not an option. (I'm not aware of anyone doing two years of soybeans but maybe it happens)
The US also uses a lot of soy beans internally. Prices are down, but farmers are still selling soybeans and with careful management are making money.
For supplemental fertilizer you buy though you are correct.
This is about the COST of fertilizer causing a difference in the wheat harvest. At what point does it make any remote sense when discussing trade factors affecting harvests to try to correct someone by saying that? Everyone else is clearly talking about farm inputs you buy.
But there's a very weird underlying sentiment on HN where many people seem to directly or indirectly jump whenever they can to downplay the existence of climate change. Sometimes, they are emboldened by articles like this which intentionally use misleading headlines.
You're completely right, though, that in this instance, soy beans were mostly focused on because of consumer trends and less fertilizer need. Wheat is just an expensive crop right now. Also, soybeans would actually be less resilient to drought which furthers your point re: the article headline.
"a severe drought in the U.S. Plains has curbed production of hard red winter wheat, the largest variety grown in the U.S... The USDA projected U.S. wheat production in the 2026/27 season at 1.561 billion bushels, down from 1.985 billion in 2025/26, as a severe drought in the U.S. Plains was likely to slash the hard red winter wheat crop by 25% from a year earlier."
"The USDA rated just 28% of the U.S. winter wheat crop in good-to-excellent condition in a weekly crop conditions report on Monday, the lowest rating for this point in the growing season in four years."
This was mentioned in the very first sentence, it's the very first attribution of falling wheat harvest.
Yes Hormuz and rising oil costs are also a factor, a secondary one since they are impacting spring wheat planting decisions as you mention.
So lower fertilizer demand, and healthier produce, could be a net positive.
Kind of like an oil shortage is driving an increase in EVs and renewable energy.
Finally waking up the US that oil dependence is a National Security issue that renewables are possible solution for. That renewables aren't the 'woke' enemy, but a valid technical option.
So, maybe a net positive.
Thanks for sharing!
The website's domain was created 3 months ago (site doesn't even have any entries in the wayback machine) and supposedly pulls from USDA AMS data but when I looked at reports[1][2] I didn't see double prices compared to last year.
Some prices even looked lower? But it was hard to make comparisons because of report structure and data disparity.
[1] CA Hay: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2904
[2] CO Hay: https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/viewReport/2905
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is another big factor here as fertilizer prices have massively gone up. Diesel is more expensive too. Many crops this planting season (in the northern hemisphere) haven't been fertilized like they would normally and it's too late now so that will absolutely impact food prices later this year. The Global South will be disproportionately affected.
Lastly, the continued Russia-Ukraine war continues to impact Ukraine's wheat crops. Ukraine is (or was?) often called the "bread basket of Europe" because it was such a significant wheat grower and exporter.
We (the world) are genuinely going to have much more expensive food prices later this year and, in some places, there will be genuine famine.
From what your saying it sounds more about Tariffs
The data comes from USDA's WASDE report which is released every month, between the 8th and 12th. There is no "timing," and people were talking about the expect wheat harvest this season for weeks ahead of Tue's report anyway
The "when" of media coverage is just as important as the "what" and the "when" here is while the president is currently in China. If you want to think that's irrelevant, that's a choice I guess.
giantg2•1h ago
dakolli•1h ago
atomicnumber3•1h ago
mothballed•50m ago
In fact, this is the only remaining way I know of to more or less 'homestead' federal land in a way that results in a permanent deed. The rest of the homesteading type stuff was revoked back in like the 70s or 80s.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Land_Act
datsci_est_2015•46m ago
mothballed•44m ago
https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/Desert%20Land%20Entr...
JumpCrisscross•21m ago
mothballed•19m ago
I'm not sure if the BLM has relaxed their discretion under Trump or not.
tekla•38m ago
The Colorado River compact came into effect in 1922 and I'm almost surprised literal fist fights haven't erupted over it during the modern negotiations.
pixl97•55m ago
Desalination uses far more power than AI ever would.
hnthrow0287345•49m ago
This is where capitalism drives humanity off a cliff.
Imustaskforhelp•53m ago
There are countries in middle east like UAE, Saudi arabia etc. which rely on desalination but they are relying it for the clean drinking water, not for the food generation. They import almost 90% of their food iirc.
The amount of energy required to desalinate all water and the environmental impacts to get that energy would literally be quite catastrophic and I am not even sure if it would be even feasible and food prices would literally skyrocket or food would simply be produced even more less by magnitudes of order.
shagie•27m ago
https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/forage-and-hay
https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/QAT/yea...
vel0city•53m ago
ChrisRR•36m ago
vel0city•19m ago
If the ocean is anywhere near there, Tulsa OK would be under some 800 feet of ocean.
The Great Lakes will have also been flooded by the oceans, as they top out at ~600ft ASL.
HelloMcFly•50m ago
dopa42365•49m ago
shagie•45m ago
Let's take Kansas... the largest producer of wheat in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/190376/top-us-states-in-...
Kansas wheat crop down 38% from last year https://youtu.be/QjrhAXzEGDc
Kansas cannot run on desalination plants ... there's no salt water. The gulf coast of Texas is 1000 miles away.
While aquifers do regenerate (Groundwater levels in the Kansas High Plains aquifer see first overall increase since 2019 https://kgs.ku.edu/news/article/groundwater-levels-in-the-ka... ) I'm going to point out that news article has seven years of declines previously.
The aquifer that Kansas draws upon is the Ogallala Aquifer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer ) and you can see the rate of depletion at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/nation... - there are spots in Kansas where the groundwater dropped by 150 feet from before it was tapped with deep wells to 2015.
Yes, most of the earth is covered by water. Getting that water to Kansas and Nebraska and North Dakota, however, is a problem.
andsoitis•43m ago
There are only 3 countries that do: Bahamas, Maldives, and Malta.
Other countries that depend heavily, but not completely: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE.
bell-cot•36m ago
mikey_p•5m ago