Last year, Brazilian soybeans at times traded more than $80 per ton below their Chicago counterparts – a discount reflecting abundant South American supplies and logistics bottlenecks. By year-end, that relationship had inverted entirely, with Brazil’s prices exceeding Chicago as tariff headlines and shifting trade flows scrambled traditional export patterns.
Brazil and the U.S.: Soybean Growers to the World
This flip unfolded against a backdrop of continued Brazilian soybean dominance, with the country holding the title as the world’s largest soybean producer after first surpassing the U.S. in the 2017 crop year.
While the U.S. has exported between 30% and 50% of its production since 2000, Brazil regularly exports the majority of its crop, with shipments expected to surpass 64% of production in the 2025/2026 marketing year. For the U.S., the export share of production is expected to fall to just under 37% in 2025/2026, from more than 43% the year prior. Brazilian exports are so great that in the current crop year, Brazilian exports (114,000 million MT) are projected to fall just shy of total U.S. production (115,989 million MT).
With two dominant producers comes different export patterns, seasonal cycles and regional price dynamics, highlighting a need for risk management tools that can address both markets and the relationship between them.
Soybean (Chicago) futures were launched at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in 1936 and are physically delivered at various designated shipping and switching districts along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. As the soybean crushing industry evolved, so did the CBOT soybean complex: Soybean Oil and Soybean Meal futures were launched in 1950 and 1951, respectively.
FOB Santos Soybeans Financially Settled (Platts) futures (SAS) were launched at CME Group in 2020 and are financially settled, allowing market participants to trade on reported Brazilian Soybean export prices at the Ports of Santos in U.S. dollars without the option for physical delivery at expiration. While most Brazilian soybeans are produced in the central Mato Grosso region, soybeans are widely exported out of the “southern arc” of Brazil, which comprises the ports of Santos and Paranagua.
SAS is a regional price discovery and price risk management tool that is often traded in conjunction with the benchmark Chicago Soybean futures contract. Market participants can trade the SAS futures as an outright price or as a spread against the Chicago contract to manage price risk on the spread between Chicago and Brazil futures, commonly referred to as the Chicago-Brazil basis.
Trading activity in SAS ramped up in 2025, reaching record highs as the market sought additional tools for managing price risk amid uncertainty in the outlook for global trade flows, driven by tariff headlines. Open interest reached a record 1,961 contracts in March.
Do Chicago and Brazil Soybean Prices Correlate?
The Chicago-Brazil basis fluctuated wildly in 2025, with SAS under Chicago Soybeans by more than $80 per ton mid-year, and then exceeding Chicago Soybeans by year-end. Tracking the settlement prices of Chicago and SAS futures contracts (converted to the same unit) can provide valuable price discovery for this regional basis.
The different growing seasons between Brazil and the U.S. cause seasonal fluctuations in the basis between Chicago and South American Soybeans, though unique regional factors can also lead to price deviations throughout the year.
Demonstrating seasonality, the total correlation between the daily settlement prices for SAS and Soybean futures over the last 36 months is 77%, but when considering the data quarterly, individual coefficients of correlation are higher, ranging from 81% to 92%. While Q4 and Q1 show stronger correlations between the two futures, the weakest correlation is observed in the second quarter, when the first Brazilian harvest is marketed. North American soybeans, conversely, are harvested from September through November.
The price correlation between Chicago and Brazil has started to diverge recently with Brazilian prices falling, likely reflecting seasonal variation alongside an expected record harvest, as well as the impact of trade policies.
Scenarios to Monitor in 2026
The launch of SAS options on May 11* arrives as factors beyond seasonality could contribute to continued uncertainty in soybean markets this year.
The USDA’s Prospective Plantings report, released March 31, showed that U.S. farmers intend to plant more soybeans than last year. However, actual planted acres could shift, especially as the conflict in Iran triggered a surge in fertilizer prices during the same month of the report’s release.
Additionally, trade dynamics continue to be in focus as both the U.S. and Brazil vie to meet China’s soybean demand. China imported a record amount of soybeans last year, shifting away from the U.S. amid higher tariffs, benefiting South America.
As these scenarios play out, managing global soybean price risk will likely be top of mind for those across the industry.
*Pending regulatory review
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