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FAS/Pretoria’s Oilseeds and Products annual report provides information on the production, supply, and distribution for soybean, sunflowerseed, and rapeseed in South Africa for marketing year (MY) 2023/24, MY 2024/25, and MY 2025/26.

Soybeans from the United States are once again eligible to enter South Africa. After a mid-summer drought that caused a 35 percent drop in production, South Africa needs to import soybeans to supplement domestic production and maintain crushing demand.

This report presents an overview of Spain’s soybean and products market. Imports of soybean and soybean products to Spain amount on average to nearly 6 million metric tons (MT) per year. The robust, dynamic, and export-oriented livestock sector drives the country’s feed ingredients demand.

South Africa has experienced an upsurge in oilseed plantings over the past 20 years with a near nine-fold expansion in soybean area. Post foresees that the positive trend in soybean plantings will continue in marketing year 2023/24 with area and oilseed production reaching historically high level of 1.8 million hectares and 3.6 million metric tons, respectively.

U.S. exporters can find ample opportunities in the Iberian Peninsula. Spain is the third-largest European Union (EU) destination for U.S. agricultural products, with Portugal ranking 11th. In 2021, the United States exported $1.6 billion of agricultural products to Spain, or 15 percent of total U.S. agricultural exports to the EU. The United States held a 4 percent market share of Spain’s agricultural imports and 2 percent market share in Portugal, behind other EU member states as a group and Brazil.

South Africa experienced an upward trend in oilseed production (soybeans and sunflower seeds) driven largely by rising oilseed prices, higher yielding cultivars, and a local demand-pull from investments in new oilseed processing plants.

Post predicts that South Africa’s positive trend in soybean plantings will continue in the 2021/22 MY in line increased local crushing capacity.

South Africa is continuing to experiencing a positive trend in the area planted with summer rainfall field crops during the past two decades.

In the 2020/21 MY, Post forecasts that South Africa's oilseed meal imports will drop by 8 percent to 550,000 tons and oilseed oil imports will decline by 5 percent to less than 400,000 tons...

Spain remains the largest grower of biotech corn in the European Union and a major consumer of genetically engineered soybean meal in animal feed.

South Africa has a robust and experienced regulatory system for genetically engineered (GE) products which started with the publication of its “GMO” act in 1997.

Post forecasts that South Africa’s oilseed meal imports will drop by 25 percent to 495,000 tons in the 2019/20 MY, as a record of 1.3 million tons of oilseed meal will be produced locally.