Brazil’s 2025-26 soybean harvest is on track for a record 177 million metric tonnes, roughly 42 percent of global output. That headline number masks a bigger story, a coordinated, largely China-financed build-out of agricultural logistics across Latin America that is restructuring global protein flows for the next decade and beyond.

Three data points anchor the picture. China sourced 73.6 percent of its soybean imports from Brazil in 2025, a record share. US soybean sales to China collapsed to near zero by late 2025 before being partially restored under the Phase Two framework agreed in November. And COFCO International, China’s state-owned grain trader, is finalising a 14.5-million-tonne dry-bulk terminal at the Port of Santos under a 25-year concession, more than triple its previous throughput at the same site.

The pivot in plain sight

Read individually, each story is familiar. Read together, they describe a structural reweighting. The COFCO Santos terminal represents a USD 285 million bet that Brazilian volumes will keep growing [Macao News, 2026]. The same firm is doubling crush capacity at its Rondonópolis plant in Mato Grosso, from 4,500 to roughly 10,000 metric tonnes per day [The AgriBiz, 2026]. A recent Mengniu Dairy supply agreement covers 1.5 million tonnes of certified-sustainable Brazilian soy, the kind of long-dated offtake that justifies the upstream capex.

Further north, the Brazilian government has committed approximately USD 920 million to inland waterway investments to channel grain through the so-called Northern Arc of ports at Barcarena, Santarém and Itacoatiara, with the potential to shave USD 3 to 5 per tonne off truck freight from Mato Grosso producers [Agri-Pulse, 2026; USDA Brazil Soybean Transportation Guide, 2024-25]. On the Pacific side, the Chinese-financed Chancay megaport in Peru, inaugurated in November 2025, has reportedly cut shipping costs to Asia by roughly 30 percent and shortened the route by some 10,000 kilometres relative to the Atlantic transit out of Santos [East Asia Forum, February 2026].

Even the recent US-China deal, which commits Beijing to 25 million tonnes of US soy a year through 2028, sits awkwardly against this backdrop. The volumes are real, but they are below pre-2018 peaks, and they do not reverse a decade of port, rail and crushing capacity built specifically to serve a Pacific customer.

Pamoja Insights

The market is reading this cycle as a trade-policy story. We think it is, more importantly, an infrastructure story, and the implications run well beyond the headline tonnage.

First, the capex tells the truth. Twenty-five-year concessions, doubled crush capacity, and dredged waterways are not financed for a counter-cyclical bounce. Once these assets are paid for, marginal-cost economics will keep volumes routed through Santos and Chancay regardless of who occupies the White House. The current US-China tonnage commitment is best read as a political ceiling on Latin American share, not a structural one.

Second, the COFCO Santos transaction is a template that emerging-market PPP frameworks should study, not just observe. A state-backed agri-trader securing a 25-year terminal concession in a private port, alongside upstream crush capacity and a long-dated offtake into Chinese dairy, is sovereign-grade vertical integration in a private wrapper. Development finance institutions writing African port and corridor concessions now have a working comparator, and a competitor, to benchmark against.

Third, there is an underpriced second-order squeeze on African and South Asian protein chains. Cheap, abundant Brazilian soy meal arriving into Asia compresses regional feed prices and pulls global crush margins downward. East African aquaculture (where AgDevCo recently placed a USD 15 million follow-on into Victory Group), West African poultry, and South Asian dairy operations face simultaneous fertiliser cost pressure and feed-price competition at the very moment these sectors most need to scale. The right policy response is not protectionism; it is targeted productivity capital and corridor logistics that bring landed African feed costs into the same neighbourhood.

Fourth, listed mid-stream Latin American agri-logistics carry quasi-utility cash flows, long-tenor, take-or-pay-shaped, indexed to volumes that are now structurally rising, but they continue to trade closer to commodity multiples than to infrastructure ones. That gap should not last as the asset-class characteristics become harder to ignore.

Fifth, and most relevant to Pamoja’s mandate: the Northern Arc playbook is exportable. Inland origination, blended-finance corridor logistics, and a multi-decade offtake-anchored concession is the clearest case study in years for what mechanisation and PPP frameworks could deliver across African grain corridors, Beira, Nacala, Lobito, if the financing stack and political will align. The model is already proven; the question is who builds the African version, and with whose capital.

The next decade of food security will be decided less in trading rooms and more in concession agreements. The grain corridor has pivoted south. The question for emerging-market policymakers and allocators is whether they are reading the map.

Sources

  • Brazil’s record soy harvest could crush global prices in 2026 — Agrolatam
  • Brazil sets new records as global soybean leader amid US-China trade tensions — S&P Global, March 2026
  • COFCO International Brasil wins 25-year terminal concession in Port of Santos — Macao News
  • How COFCO prepares to gain more ground in Brazil’s exports — The AgriBiz
  • China’s COFCO doubling soybean crush capacity in Brazil — RFD-TV
  • Is 2026 the year Brazil unlocks its infrastructure ambitions? — Agri-Pulse
  • Peru bets on Chancay to reshape Pacific trade — East Asia Forum, February 2026
  • Chancay port cuts transport costs, giving strong boost to Peru-China agricultural trade — Global Times
  • Agricultural trade: China steps back from US soybeans — American Farm Bureau Federation
  • AgDevCo announces USD 15M follow-on investment in Victory Group