Effects of price and transportation costs in soybean trade

Abstract

The United States, Brazil, and Argentina are responsible for 83% of world’s soybean production. Together, they respond to more than 80% of soybean grains and soybean meal exported and for more than 60% of soybean oil exportation. This paper studies the soybean trade of these three major exporters with the top ten commercial partners of each one in order to examine the main factors that influence this relationship. We follow a network analysis approach to evaluate the level of interdependence between exporters and importers. Our research studies the three main soybean products: grain, meal, and oil. The findings seem to indicate that countries prefer importing soybean grains to process inside their borders due to commodity prices and logistics costs.