The Battle of the Beans: How Direct Brazil-China Soybean Trade Was Stillborn in 2004

Abstract

Prepaying was an unusual operation, since most farmers delivered a portion of their harvest to cover the amount prefinanced by trading companies, and received payment for the remainder only after delivery. After these first operations, Chinatex sought to prefinance with cheaper credit than the ABCDs, rather than prepaying for deliveries. All reference to "tons" hereafter indicate metric tons.

Geographies of meatification: an emerging Asian meat complex

“…While we have pointed to the significance of agribusiness based in regional capital, in line with Schneider's (2017ab) work in China, the exact roles played by corporations do however require more thorough investigation across scales. Oliveira's (2016Oliveira's ( , 2018) recent work explores the contestations involved in Chinese agribusiness expansions in Brazil as well as the broader geopolitics of Brazilian soybeans. We suggest that similar studies based in the operations of Southeast Asian agribusiness and their interactions with formerly hegemonic Western interests in the meat complex globally is a crucial field for further inquiry.…”

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

“…Woon (2013: 32) argues that this was a call for a new way of ‘doing’ geopolitics, that ethnographies had the power to bring to light ‘(grounded, first‐hand) storylines that are arguably obfuscated by secondary narratives, thereby attesting to the multiple geographies and politics of knowledge production’. These insights can illuminate state‐personnel experiences (for instance, Weisser, 2014; Bachmann, 2016; Gruby & Campbell, 2013; Bornschlegl, 2018), economic processes (Carlisle, 2016; Connolly, 2017; Cook et al, 2004; Cook et al, 2017; Cook & Harrison, 2007; Oliveira, 2018; Watkins, 2018), or the politics of water management (Goh, 2019). However, these insights have frequently been conjoined to new conceptual approaches that have challenged what ‘political’ means in political geography, changing the underlying concept of the subject.…”

Dependent development in South America: China and the soybean nexus

“…The “big four” agribusiness traders, known as the ABCDs (ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis‐Dreyfus), took Chinese companies to GAFTA in London, which ruled in favour of the transnational traders, hence resulting in Chinese importers paying at least US$1.5 billion more than the market price, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wen, ; China Daily, ; Oliveira & Schneider, : 171). The sudden shift in price was considered to be a result of changing reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which first suggested low global stocks of soybean, and later a record harvest in the United States prompted the sudden drop in prices (see Oliveira, ). The main beneficiaries of this “soybean crisis” were the transnational agricultural trading companies, which came to acquire the domestic Chinese processing companies that had suffered financially from the price volatility.…”

“…This implies a certain unease over the control of the soybean market by U.S.‐based corporations, and the need for China to develop direct trade linkages with South American producers. Indeed, Oliveira () describes one of China's first attempts to directly trade soybeans with Brazil, cutting ABCDs out of the process, even before the Battle of the Beans. China's dependency upon U.S.‐based transnational companies had also extended to agro‐technology.…”

“…In 2012, the volume of soybeans processed in China was less than half of the country's operating ability, which meant there was enough idle capacity to process Argentina's entire production volume (ibid). In other areas of agribusiness production, such as pork, the industry is led by "dragon head enterprises" encouraged by 5 For a detailed ethnographic account of the Battle of the Beans, see Oliveira (2018b). the government (Schneider, 2017).…”