Browse Data and Analysis

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.

The installation of Bangladesh’s Interim Government in August 2024, has led to a renewed focus on macroeconomic stability, which will enable increased exports to the market as restrictions on Letters of Credit ease as foreign currency reserves stabilize.

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.

Despite economic challenges and high feed prices, demand for feed is expected to grow in Bangladesh as large commercial poultry farms expand their operations and some major feed producers have initiated contract poultry farming.

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.

For marketing year (MY) 2023/24, Post’s soybean import forecast is 2.4 million MT, on Bangladesh rebounding from its current economic slowdown, while local soybean production remains flat.

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.

Edible oil prices have been trending higher and are now increasingly volatile due to poor market transparency and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Post forecasts MY 2022/2023 soybean imports up to 2.8 million MT, while local soybean production remains flat.

Bangladesh’s feed industry is currently recovering from a difficult marketing year (MY) 2019/20 (i.e., July to June).

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.

South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, accounts for 24 percent of the world’s population, with 1.84 billion people in 2019.