Livestock sector faces €1.5bn hit from rising soya prices
The European Feed Manufacturers' Federation, has warned more expensive soya may cost the EU livestock sector up to €1.5bn annually.
Soya prices surged in the EU in late October, to €393 from €330-345/t, a 9%-14% gain in a week.
FEFAC, the European Feed Manufacturers' Federation, has warned more expensive soya may cost the EU livestock sector up to €1.5bn annually.
European livestock feed manufacturers have warned their suppliers have withdrawn offers for 2026 deliveries of soymeal, and remaining 2025 offers have become scarce and subject to sharp price increases.
The EU depends heavily on imports of soybean for its livestock industry. In the year to June 2025, it imported about 14.5 million tonnes of soybeans and 20.1 million tonnes of soybean meal, mostly from the US and Brazil.
Soyabean is needed to raise the protein content of feedstuffs, which must be at least 10% protein for most livestock.
The EU depends on imports because yields in the EU are only about one third of Brazilian yields, and the EU produces less than three million tonnes. Ukraine and Russia each produces about three million tonnes.
Two factors have now disrupted the global soya market, and their outcome will determine how much farmers pay for feedstuffs this winter.
Markets have tightened up due to China's new commitment to buy 12 million tonnes of US soybeans in the last two months of 2025, and 25 million tonnes in each of the following three years, The flood of cheap US soybean on global markets will be reduced by Xi Jinping and Donald Trump's new trade agreement.
European farmers have gained from a US soy oversupply since 2018, when trade disputes first broke out between China and the US.
Increased oversupply, and lower prices followed last summer, when China stopped purchasing US soybeans as part of the tariffs war between Washington and Beijing.
Soya market disruption has also been triggered by the EU's dithering over its Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The EUDR entered into force in June 2023, prohibiting the sale in the EU of rubber, palm oil, cattle products, coffee, soya, wood or cocoa grown on recently deforested land, or which contributed to forest degradation.
There have been so many changes to the EUDR since 2023, including some hastily renegotiated recent changes, that suppliers of soya to the EU now fear they cannot comply with the EUDR's newest deadline, just a few weeks away on December 30, the second last day of the year.
The latest refinements to the EUDR will be adopted only within a few days before December 30. To avoid their products being turned back, or seized in the EU, suppliers may have to depend on a proposed six-month grace period before EUDR checks and enforcement measures begin.
With EUDR obligations to apply from December 30, they fear retroactive punishment if found in breach of EUDR regulations.
The EU still has to decide on an end-of-2026 EUDR start date for micro and small enterprises. This would include farmers and foresters in the EU. But business people warn this staggered introduction is unworkable, due to the interdependence of companies in the supply chain.
If huge disruption of the import of many commodities needed by EU industries is to be avoided, yet another EUDR postponement looks likely.
The Irish Grain and Feed Association has urgently requested that the Irish Government demands a full 12-month postponement of the EUDR implementation date, in order to avoid damaging impacts on the livestock feed market. The IGFA has made a similar request to MEPs.
Subsequent events have proved the EUDR was an ill-prepared 2023 addition to the EU's Green Deal, pushed through by MEPs from the Socialists and Democrats, Renew, and Green political groups, supported by non-governmental organisations.
These supporters have now denounced delays in its implementation, and called for it to proceed as originally planned.
It was first due to take effect from the end of 2024. Inevitably, it came under pressure from the EU's trading partners.
And now, with US president Donald Trump ultra-sensitive about trade barriers, whether tariff or non-tariff, EU leaders may be getting cold feet. This year's EU-US trade agreement stipulated that the US be put in a “negligible risk to global deforestation” category.
The EUDR has also been fiercely opposed within the EU, with changes demanded by the European People’s Party (the EU’s largest political group); and by agriculture ministers from 18 member states, including Ireland, looking for derogations in their countries where deforestation is demonstrably insignificant.
However, multinational food producers such as Nestlé, Mars Wrigley and Ferrero, have told the European Commission to go ahead with the EUDR because they are ready, and a new delay would introduce uncertainty and additional compliance expenses for them.
These conflicting pressures seem to have further paralysed the EU's usual snail's pace decision-making involving member states, the commission, and the parliament, and added to uncertainty surrounding annual imports into the EU of about €10bn of wood, €8bn of palm oil, €7bn of coffee, €6bn of soyabean, €4.5bn of cocoa, €3bn of rubber, and €2bn of cattle.
