Mississippi Soybean Farmers End Dour Year, Hope For Profitable ’26

By Katherine Lin

Soybeans have been in the headlines a lot this year. Between a trade war with China, rising costs for farming equipment and supplies and low prices, farmers have seen a perfect storm of economic uncertainty. 

“It’s been a doozy of a year for agriculture,” said Rob Baker, a Mississippi soybean farmer and Director of the American Soybean Association. 

Soybeans are the second-largest agricultural product in Mississippi behind chickens. Valued at around $1.6 billion a year, almost all of the state’s soybeans are destined for international markets. 

China is the world’s largest importer, but in May, it stopped buying soybeans in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. China did not place its first order until October, just before Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping. This period of uncertainty left American soybean farmers in limbo.

The White House has said that China committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans from the U.S., but so far it has only bought 332,000 metric tons. This has led to concerns about whether it will keep its promises, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently said that China is still on track to keep up its end of the deal. 

This year’s tariffs alone didn’t cause the challenges but they did exacerbate existing problems soybean farmers were facing. In fact, farmers are still experiencing impacts of a 2018 trade war.