It appears that most consumers of organic feed grains have covered themselves for organic proteins they will feed to organic chickens, organic cows, and organic turkeys during Q4. Organic soybean meal prices have remained elevated, with offers near $1,550 per metric ton in several areas of the United States. The question is, how did consumers cover themselves.  According to the Foreign Agricultural Services data, approximately 120K metric tons of organic soybean meal were imported into the United States during Q4 2020. More than 90% of the organic soybean meal came from India.

In 2021, expectations are that this number will only be a small fraction of this volume. Fastmarkets/The Jacobsen estimates that 25K metric tons of organic soybean meal were imported in October. We are unsure if this volume will be repeated in November but have not heard of any bulk ships carrying organic soybean meal. There are no scheduled ships expected to dock on the east coast in either…