Agro Internacional

International Agro — Issue 11

In Argentina, soybean oil exports reached 3.03 million tonnes at the start of the 2025/26 campaign, the highest volume on record, but the channel that makes the record work belongs to whoever is buying, not to whoever is selling. In the United States, a 12-11 Senate committee vote sent the Farm Bill to the floor where it needs 60, with the extension expiring in 9 days. In Europe, the 100-day countdown to the EUDR deadline begins with the traceability information system still being assembled. Argentina, the United States and Europe in the week of 21 September 2026, read not for the news but for the layer it hides.

English Gabriel Rondon

🌐 Em português: Agro Internacional — Edição 11

In Argentina, soybean oil exports reached 3.03 million tonnes at the start of the 2025/26 campaign, the highest volume on record, at prices above USD 1,100 per tonne, but the channel that makes the record work belongs to whoever is buying, not to whoever is selling. In the United States, a 12-11 Senate committee vote sent the Farm Bill to the floor where it needs 60, with the extension expiring on 30 September 2026. In Europe, the 100-day countdown to the EUDR deadline begins with the traceability information system relaunched fewer than 90 days ago. Every week I read the world’s agriculture looking not for the news, but for the layer it hides.

In Argentina, soybean oil exports reached 3.03 million tonnes at the start of the 2025/26 marketing campaign, the highest volume ever recorded for this period of the season according to INDEC, driven by record Indian buying and by the United States and Ukraine redirecting a growing share of their production to domestic biofuel markets, reducing the supply available for export. In the United States, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved the Agricultural Act of 2026 on 16 September 2026 by 12 votes to 11 along strict party lines, with Mitch McConnell’s return after a three-month absence providing the decisive Republican vote, but the bill now needs 60 votes on the Senate floor and the current Farm Bill extension expires on 30 September 2026, according to DTN and Farm Policy News. In Europe, exactly 100 days remain until the 30 December 2026 EUDR deadline for large and medium operators, with the Commission’s information system relaunched in June 2026 with simplified declarations and API specifications, and operator training sessions completed on 17 September 2026, according to eudr.today.

It looks like three stories. It is one.

In each, the commodity exists. Argentina has the oil, the price and the demand. The United States has the land and the producer. Europe has the market and the rules. What is missing in each case is the coordination layer that turns what exists into something that flows predictably and in a verifiable way.

3.03 Mt
Soybean oil exported at the start of the 2025/26 campaign — INDEC
9 days
Until the Farm Bill extension deadline (30 September 2026) — Farmers.gov
100 days
Until the EUDR deadline for large operators (30 December 2026) — eudr.today

Argentina: the oil is a record, but the channel belongs to India

Argentine soybean oil exports reached 3.03 million tonnes at the start of the 2025/26 marketing campaign, the highest volume ever recorded for this period of the historical series, according to INDEC data tracked by DataPortuaria.

The volume is real.

What sustains the record is a combination of factors that do not depend on Argentine infrastructure. India, the world’s largest importer of oils, is buying at record levels. And the main historical competitors, the United States and Ukraine, are redirecting a growing share of their production to domestic biofuel markets, shrinking the internationally available supply.

Prices reflect the moment. Soybean oil for export remained above USD 1,100 per tonne throughout 2026, with periods above USD 1,200, also driven by tension in the Strait of Hormuz, according to LSEG data.

The hidden machinery: Argentina’s record is not a coordination asset it owns. It is a window that opens when others close. India buys because it needs to and because other suppliers are occupied with domestic biofuel. When the United States or Ukraine return to the export market, or when India completes its own transition to domestic biodiesel, the channel disappears. Argentine soybean oil has no long-term contract with its destination. It has a spot price that reflects what is missing in the world at that moment.

United States: committee approved, but the floor needs twice the votes

The Senate Agriculture Committee approved the Agricultural Act of 2026 on 16 September 2026, by 12 votes to 11, along strict party lines. Mitch McConnell’s return after a three-month absence was the vote that flipped the count.

The bill goes to the Senate floor.

But the floor is not the committee. To overcome Senate procedural hurdles, the bill needs 60 votes, which requires at least a handful of Democrats crossing the aisle. The current Farm Bill extension expires on 30 September 2026. The Senate has only 10 working days of session before entering its pre-midterm October recess. Most analyses point to a short-term extension as the most likely path, with the floor vote coming in November after the elections.

The sticking point remains SNAP. The bill passed by the House in April cut approximately USD 186 billion from the programme over ten years, according to Bloomberg Government. Senate Democrats on the committee want a two-year grace period before states must co-finance the programme. Republicans offer one year. The committee count shifted from 10-11 in August to 12-11 in September. The floor would need more movement still.

The hidden machinery: the Farm Bill is not a budget. It is the architecture that tells every American producer what reference prices, crop insurance formulas, and conservation payment rates will look like for the next five years. While it runs on short-term extensions, producers cannot plan beyond the next quarter. McConnell’s return signalled movement, but a 12-11 committee margin and a 60-vote floor requirement are very different political distances.

Europe: 100 days and the traceability system still assembling

One hundred days remain until the 30 December 2026 EUDR deadline, the regulation that bans the import or commercialisation in the EU of seven commodities, including soy and cattle, without proof that they are deforestation-free and traceable to the exact plot of land where they were produced.

Last week marked the end of the intensive training period. The European Commission held dedicated sessions for operators on 3, 8, 10 and 15 September 2026, and a specific session for micro and small primary operators on 17 September 2026, according to eudr.today.

The EUDR information system was relaunched in June 2026 with simplified declarations and API specifications, so that operators and traders can submit due diligence statements directly. The logic is that all traceability documentation converges into a single verifiable system.

The hardest operational problem remains unchanged. The regulation requires the first EU operator placing the product on the market to trace the commodity back to the farm of origin, with exact geolocation of the plot. For supply chains with multiple intermediaries in countries such as Brazil or Argentina, this demands direct agreements with each first-tier supplier, who in turn must map their own, in a cascade.

The hidden machinery: the EUDR deadline is not a commodity compliance date. It is a date by which the information system that certifies that compliance needs to be running at scale across the entire chain. Having deforestation-free soy or oil is not enough if you cannot prove it in a system accepted by the European Union. Whoever builds the proof infrastructure controls access to the market. One hundred days to assemble that for an entire soybean supply chain is a tight window.

The synthesis: the frontier of agriculture was always coordination, not the harvest

Take the three out of this week’s headline.

In Argentina, soybean oil exists at record volume and historic prices, but the channel that delivers it to the final buyer is built by Indian demand and by the space that competitors leave, not by Argentina. In the United States, one senator’s return after three months turned 10-11 into 12-11 and sent the agricultural coordination law to the floor, where it needs twice the votes and where the window is 9 days. In Europe, 100 days until the traceability proof must be in force, with the information system that will verify that proof relaunched fewer than 90 days ago.

In none of the three is the problem the physical thing.

What is scarce, contested and decisive is always the same: the infrastructure of trust and coordination around the thing that already exists.

It is the same lesson Brazil learned in its own way, when it discovered that the world’s largest herd barely becomes capital, not for lack of cattle, but for lack of proof. (I wrote about it in The Cattle That Won’t Become Capital.)

The next frontier of agriculture is not to produce more. It is to build the layer that lets what already exists finally flow.

Notes and sources (week of 21 September 2026)