Brazil has overtaken the United States as a sorghum shipper to China, sending about three and a half times as much of the grain as American exporters in August.

Brazilian exporters shipped 185,375 tonnes of sorghum to China in August and 570,210 tonnes in September, worth a combined $170.2mn, according to customs data from Brazil's trade ministry updated on 6 October.

US shipments to China totalled 52,281 tonnes in August, US Census Bureau data shows. American figures for September have not yet been published.

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Brazil sent no grain sorghum to China in 2025, when its only export of the grain was a 105-tonne consignment to Qatar.

In the first nine months of 2026 it exported 790,790 tonnes, more than 95 per cent of it to China.

Brazil and China signed a phytosanitary protocol for sorghum in November 2024, and Beijing cleared the first 10 Brazilian establishments to export the grain a year later, according to Brazil's agriculture ministry. A 25.8-tonne shipment sent in January was Brazil's first sorghum shipment to China since 2014, the USDA said.

Brazil's two-month total exceeds anything the US sent China in August and September in any of the past six years; the most was 698,303 tonnes, in 2020. Late summer, before the new US crop is harvested, is usually a slower period for American shipments.

[explore products="1007" flow="exports" partner="CN" period="monthly" metric="quantity" view="chart" years="2020-2026" title="US sorghum exports to China, monthly, 2020–2026" subtitle="Tonnes shipped by month, January 2020 to August 2026; US Census Bureau data, September 2026 not yet published"]

China's own data do not yet show the switch. The US supplied half of the 616,900 tonnes of sorghum that arrived in China in August, and Argentina 183,400 tonnes, according to Chinese customs figures compiled by China Grain Network.

Brazil was not named among the origins. In the first eight months of the year, the US supplied 60 per cent of China's 5.49mn tonnes of imports.

The voyage from Brazil takes about 45 days. The first bulk cargo, 69,000 tonnes loaded by state-owned COFCO International at Santos, left in August on the Guoyuan 26 for Nansha port in Guangzhou.

Shipping schedules showed about 400,000 tonnes each of Brazilian and US sorghum landing in China in August and September, the US Department of Agriculture's office in Beijing said on 1 October.

PRICE GAP

Brazil appears to have won the business on price. "Brazilian August offers were around $300–310/MT, compared with U.S. landed prices of $391/MT with a 12% tariff," the USDA's Beijing office said.

That 12 per cent combines China's standard 2 per cent most-favoured-nation duty with a 10 per cent additional tariff on US goods, and applies only to importers granted an exclusion from a further 25 per cent retaliatory tariff, according to the USDA.

The exclusions run until 31 December. Without one, US sorghum pays 37 per cent.

The US also has less grain to sell. The USDA on 9 October forecast the US crop at about 7.39mn tonnes, down 33 per cent from last year.

Brazil's crop, grown as a second crop after soybeans, rose 20.4 per cent to 7.35mn tonnes in 2025/26 as farmers expanded the area by a third, according to national crop agency Conab, putting the two countries' 2026 harvests at about the same size.

The USDA's own estimate of the Brazilian crop is smaller, at 7mn tonnes. Conab said average yields fell 9.4 per cent, and that late-sown fields failed in parts of Goiás, the largest producing state.

Tariff relief for US growers is on the table but not in force. Sorghum is on the list of US goods China will consider for reduced tariffs under the US-China Board of Trade, published on 27 September after the Trump-Xi summit in Washington.

No rates or dates have been released, and the list carries no purchase commitment, the American Farm Bureau Federation said.

Even at a 2 per cent tariff, the USDA's Beijing office priced US sorghum for October delivery at $385 a tonne landed in China, against $327 for Argentine grain.

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"Significant volumes of Brazilian sorghum are reportedly moving into China, and we cannot afford to lose market share that may be extremely difficult to win back," Amy France, chair of the National Sorghum Producers, said on 18 September.

The group has asked President Donald Trump to secure Chinese purchases of 5mn to 7mn tonnes of US sorghum a year.

MORE TO COME

More Brazilian grain is on the way. The line-up of ships compiled by Brazil's grain exporters' association, Anec, shows 1.44mn tonnes of sorghum scheduled to load in October for all destinations, more than in August and September combined.

The USDA projects Brazil's exports at 500,000 tonnes for the whole of October 2026 to September 2027, less than October's line-up alone.

Logistics remain the main bottleneck, according to Paulo Bertolini, president of Brazil's maize growers' association, Abramilho.

Export channels are still being built and need Chinese authorisation, and some cargoes have to go in containers rather than bulk vessels, which raises costs, he told Valor. "Logistics costs make it harder to reach our sorghum," he said.

The grain is arriving in a crowded market. "As of late August, sorghum stocks jumped to a record high," the USDA's Beijing office said of China's main ports.

Stocks there stood at 1.87mn tonnes in mid-September, against 990,000 tonnes a year earlier, according to the office. Hog farming "remains deeply unprofitable", it said.

The office cut its forecast for China's 2026/27 sorghum imports to 7mn tonnes from 7.8mn in July, citing smaller crops in the US, Australia and Brazil.

China depends on imports for feed, while its own sorghum crop is "largely tied to the baijiu industry through contract farming arrangements", the office said in July.

"As soon as the shipments arrive there in China and, if all goes well, the dynamic changes," Gabriel Cordeiro, director-general in Brazil of Chinese trading house Hang Tung, told Reuters in early August.

"Brazil starts to have a market with forward sales, which wasn't so common."