Nonsense.
Crops are the very definition of a completely, completely fungible product.
The very definition itself.
If a population buys something from somewhere else, that OTHER market is sold. Meaning it needs to be replaced from somewhere else.
Completely fungible.
100%.
I have found that puzzling, too. If Brazil is selling China the soybeans that China used to buy from us, then we should just find whoever was buying soybeans from Brazil last year and sell to them, simple.
But that obviously is not happening. The price of soybeans in the US has crashed completely. Nobody wants these things. They are not food, we can’t ship them to Ethiopia and pat ourselves on the back like we did in the 1950s.
Brazil has massively increased their plantings because of the Chinese trade, too, so there are more soybeans around, period. It is an actual situation.