Growing global demand for soybean meal has emerged as the clearest export bright spot for U.S. soybean farmers, United Soybean Board CEO Courtney Knupp told Brownfield Ag News, framing a value-added pivot in the soy checkoff's market development work.

"The rise in soybean meal sales has been a bright spot," Knupp said in the interview. "As we see an increase in crush capacity, the checkoff has helped us to react to those realities."

Her comments land as a wave of new and expanded soybean processing facilities, much of it announced in the last three years, redraws the geography of where U.S. soybeans are processed before they leave the country. Processors including Bunge, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland have moved to lift combined U.S. crush capacity, with additional capacity coming from regional cooperatives and independent operators across the Midwest, the Plains and the Southeast.

What does the value-added approach change?

For decades, the USB's export programming has centered on promoting whole soybeans to large overseas buyers, with China historically the single largest destination. A value-added tilt shifts more of the promotional footprint toward the products that result when domestic crushers turn beans into meal and oil, which can carry a higher per-bushel return to the farmer-funded checkoff than bulk bean sales alone.

Meal, not beans, also tracks more directly with the protein demand growth happening in Southeast Asia, Latin America and parts of Africa, where rising pork and poultry production requires consistent supplies of high-protein feed. Oil flows are increasingly shaped by renewable diesel feedstock demand from refiners covered under the Renewable Fuel Standard, a separate but related policy lever that has helped justify new crush investments.

How is the checkoff retooling?

Knupp did not detail specific dollar reallocations, but USB's recent annual reports show market development traditionally accounts for the single largest share of checkoff spending, with smaller portions directed at production research, consumer education and on-farm sustainability work. The board's farmer-directors set the funding split annually and approve foreign-market program contracts with organizations including the U.S. Soybean Export Council and the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health.

The strategic shift comes at a sensitive margin moment. Cash soybean prices have come off multi-year highs, basis has weakened in parts of the western Corn Belt, and input costs for fertilizer, fuel and crop chemicals remain well above the 2018-2019 baseline. Every incremental bushel captured by U.S. crushers, rather than shipped whole, ties to meal and oil values that ultimately feed back into the bid the farmer sees at the elevator.

What remains uncertain

How quickly checkoff-funded promotion can build commercial recognition of U.S. soybean meal in markets where South American and Black Sea competitors are well entrenched is the open question. Knupp's framing suggests USB is betting that the crushing boom becomes a permanent feature of U.S. soybean demand, and that farmer investment through the checkoff will be needed to keep the expanded meal supply moving through export channels at competitive prices rather than back into a saturated domestic feed market. The pace of new crush plant start-ups over the next 18 months will set the bar against which that bet is measured.