A single 160-acre farm field might yield 8,000 bushels of soybeans (about eight trucks full). The state of Iowa grew about 622 million bushels (mb) of soybeans in 2021. The entire United States grew 4.4 billion bushels (bb) of soybeans. We can generally visualize these quantities and get a sense of how 1 mb here or there fits into the larger picture. If we lost all of Pennsylvania's 31 mb or Oklahoma's 12 mb, we would instinctually know what scale those losses would be in comparison to the nationwide or global soybean market. Show Most Americans know approximately how big a bushel basket is, even if they've only ever seen one as part of some suburban fall decorations. A bushel is 9.3 gallons in volume and that volume of soybeans typically weighs 60 pounds. We can visualize that; we can imagine hefting a 60-pound bushel basket. A farm semi's grain hopper trailer tends to hold somewhere around 1,000 bushels (if it's loaded within legal weight limits). A single rail car can hold roughly 3,500 bushels of soybeans, and therefore a full 110-car grain shuttle train can haul around 385,000 bushels. It's easy for us to contextualize how much an individual bushel or an individual shuttle train influences the supply and demand of the overall market. But an individual metric ton? Ugh. Monday brought an export sales announcement that 507,000 metric tons of soybeans had been sold to "unknown destinations." We know that's a humongous sale because most individual sales announcements are smaller, like Tuesday's sale of 132,000 metric tons of old-crop soybeans to China. But how humongous is it? How much is 507,000 metric tons in real money? Or as a cartoon character might say, "What's that in American?" P[L1] D[0x0] M[300x250] OOP[F] ADUNIT[] T[] More Recommended for YouRecommended for YouWell, when there are 2,204.6 pounds per metric ton and 60 pounds per bushel of soybeans, then there are 36.74 bushels of soybeans per metric ton. One million metric tons (mmt) is 36.74 mb -- more than the annual production of Pennsylvania. (For 56-pound test weight corn, there are 39.37 bushels per metric ton and 1 mmt equals 39.37 mb.) Therefore, a single sale of 507,000 metric tons of soybeans is equivalent to almost 20 mb. That's enough to fill eight Neo-Canal ocean vessels, the largest dry bulk carriers that can fit through the expanded Panama Canal, carrying roughly 2.5 mb each (68,000 metric tons of cargo). A more typical one-day sale (132,000 mt) is enough to fill two dry bulk ocean vessels. The entire 2021 U.S. soybean production would fit in 1,812 Neo-Canal vessels. Anyway, Monday's humongous sale was split across two marketing years, so let's figure it represents four big boats full of old-crop soybeans and four big boats full of new-crop soybeans. I've been watching the winter Olympics lately, and as much as it hurts my head to figure out temperature in Celsius or skiers' speeds in kilometers per hour, I do understand that metric units are important, because they're how we communicate global information in a fair way that everyone can share. That's fine. However -- and maybe I should be embarrassed to admit this -- even after analyzing these markets for the past 15 years, I still don't really know how to feel when I hear about a "5-mmt" cut to Brazilian soybean production, as was seen in the January World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report. Is that a lot? Is that a little? My American, bushel-obsessed brain just cannot figure it out without the assistance of a spreadsheet. Now the USDA will release another set of global production projections this Wednesday in their February WASDE. They're expected to cut Brazilian soybean production again, this time with a 6-mmt drop from 139 mmt to 133 mmt. Accumulating La Nina drought damage will likely also be recognized with another cut to Argentina's soybean production (going from 49.5 mmt in December, to 46.5 mmt in January's WASDE report, to potentially 44.2 mmt in the February estimates). How influential will those numbers be to the overall global market? If Argentina has lost 5.3 mmt of soybean production potential during the past two months of drought, that's equivalent to losing 195 mb. Meanwhile, Brazil's soybean production prospects may have fallen 11 mmt since December's big expectation of 144 mmt. In bushel terms, they may have once been looking forward to a 5.3 mb soybean crop, but now it may "only" be 4.9 mb (still higher than 2021 U.S. soybean production). The La Nina drought may have cost South America upwards of 600 mb of soybeans overall and, while we're at it, roughly 300 mb of corn production too. (Brazil was expecting the equivalent of 4.6 bb corn crop but now it's looking like more of a 4.4 bb crop, and Argentina's 2022 expectations have gone from 2.1 bb to 2.0 bb of corn.) There isn't necessarily a 1:1 relationship between production losses in South America and extra export business for the United States. Especially if prices get too high, some customers may trim their usage or switch to other sources. We can't make the simplifying assumption that all of the 600 mb lost from South America's original expectations will now need to come out of U.S. supplies -- it can't be done; we don't have that many soybeans left over to share. The ending stocks for U.S. soybeans in the 2021-22 marketing year are already projected at a tight 350 mb. But now we can at least compare apples to apples and see how a potential 6-mmt cut to Brazilian soybean production in this week's WASDE report compares to the overall market in bushel terms (6 mmt = 220 mb). We can visualize it and we can form an opinion about how influential it may be to futures prices. Elaine Kub is the author of "Mastering the Grain Markets: How Profits Are Really Made" and can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @elainekub. How do you convert tons to bushels?Converting Grain Units. BARLEY (48 lb/bu) 1 bushel = .021772 metric ton. 1 metric ton = 45.9296 bushels.. CORN & SORGHUM (56 lb/bu) 1 bushel = .0254 metric ton. 1 metric ton = 39.368 bushels.. WHEAT & SOYBEANS (60 lb/bu) 1 bushel = .0272155 metric ton. 1 metric ton = 36.7437 bushels. Note on Tons:. How many bushels are in a pound of soybeans?Crop Bushel Weights. How much oil do you get out of a bushel of soybeans?A bushel of soybeans weighs 60 lbs. (27.22 kg) and produces about 11 pounds of oil and 48 pounds of protein-rich meal.
How big is a bushel of soybeans?To facilitate the trading of grain, the USDA created weight standards for each grain so that grain could be weighed to determine the number of bushels rather than trying to make volume measurements. Corn was assigned a bushel weight of 56 pounds, while soybeans and wheat were assigned bushel weights of 60 pounds.
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How many bushels of soybeans are in a ton?
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