The Soybean Innovation Lab introduces readers to the question whether Sub Saharan Africa presents a new market opportunity for US soybean growers. Over the next three weeks, we will deliver three articles on the topic of Africa as a potential export market for US soybeans. The African market presents a very complex landscape. While it is large, diverse, and growing rapidly, there exists great uncertainty, significant business risks, and demand for soybean and associated products are just beginning.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a trilogy of decisions for the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in recent months that represents some of the most significant regulatory developments for biomass-based diesel in the program’s history. The combined effect of higher renewable volume obligations (RVOs), more restrictive small refinery exemptions, and mandatory reallocation creates substantially higher biomass-based diesel requirements for 2026-2027.

Support from the PLC and ARC-CO programs for the 2024 crop year are currently being processed and distributed by the FSA. Payments from PLC are expected to be triggered for peanut and seed cotton base acres enrolled in that program, while ARC-CO payments are expected in many counties for base acres of most crops if they were enrolled ARC-CO. Total PLC and ARC-CO support for 2024 is estimated to approach $2.6 billion for 2024, with 89% of total payments from ARC-CO.

Agricultural credit conditions in Illinois remain under strain, but there were some signs of improvement in the second quarter of 2025. Loan demand trends diverged between the state’s two Federal Reserve districts: the Chicago district continued to report net growth in demand compared to a year earlier, though at a slower pace, while the St. Louis district remained below the neutral level, indicating ongoing weakness.

Distiller’s dried grains are an important feedstuff in the U.S. DDGs often substitute for both corn and soybean meal in livestock rations. Because DDG prices are not as readily available as corn and soybean meal prices, it can be difficult to gauge the impact of DDG prices on projected feed costs. This article examines fluctuations in DDG prices since 2007, and related movement in DDG prices to movements in corn and soybean meal prices.

It’s been forty years since the Food Security Act of 1985 introduced conservation compliance to discourage wetland conversion to cropland and 35 years since the 1990 Farm Bill allocated funds for restoration of wetlands under the Wetland Reserve Program. Today, we will review a recent analysis of the impact of three decades of government-supported wetland restoration. The paper is the first large-scale empirical analysis of how the program has benefited local water quality and economies.