China, the largest destination for Brazil’s agricultural exports, is seeking to reduce its dependence on foreign food supplies.
Agriculture has emerged as a key priority in China’s next five-year plan, a shift that could eventually curb demand for Brazilian exports.
Food security has been elevated to the level of national security in China since last year. But with the release of its 15th Five-Year Plan in March, Beijing laid out its clearest roadmap yet for turning the country into an agricultural powerhouse, applying to farming the same playbook that drove its industrial rise: state coordination, targeted financing and support for innovation.
For international analysts, the implications for global agricultural trade could be significant. Consulting firm Systemiq estimates that China could cut soybean imports by 25% by 2030. Goldman Sachs, in a report published before the new plan was unveiled, sees an even steeper decline.
“As a result of both demand management and production-efficiency gains, we expect soybean import dependency to decline from around 90% today to below 30% by 2035, when food consumption is expected to peak in China,” Goldman analysts wrote in a report published in December 2025.
Brazilian experts urge caution.
China’s constraints on arable land and freshwater make food self-sufficiency a much greater challenge than achieving independence in sectors such as energy or manufacturing. That does not mean Beijing will fail to reach its goals. But the transition could take much longer than some analysts expect.
“It would be a mistake to assume China can replicate in biology what it achieved in engineering,” Marcos Jank, coordinator of the Insper Agro Global Center, told The AgriBiz. “Biology is far less predictable and much more dependent on abundant natural resources, making sustained gains far harder to achieve.”
Home to nearly 20% of the world’s population but only 9% of its arable land and 6% of its freshwater resources, China has long relied on global markets to sustain decades of rapid urbanization, industrialization and rising incomes.
“That is why the country had to turn to international markets to support five decades of urbanization, industrialization and expanding consumption,” Jank said. “Now it is trying to reduce those vulnerabilities.”
The Plan
The 2026-2030 plan sets out a series of targets: increasing grain production from 700 million to 715 million metric tons, with a stretch goal of 750 million tons; achieving 85% self-sufficiency in seeds; raising mechanization rates in planting and harvesting to more than 80%; and expanding the use of high-standard farmland.
The focus is on increasing soybean and corn production while maintaining stable output of rice and wheat. To boost yields, Beijing plans to expand irrigation and fertigation systems while promoting precision agriculture and biotechnology.
A central pillar of the strategy is the development of crop varieties tailored to local soil conditions, climate and water availability. Beyond producing seeds better suited to domestic agriculture, China aims to strengthen its seed industry to secure supply.
Alternative proteins have also become part of the strategy.
“Synthetic biology technology will be actively developed to explore new protein sources,” the government said in the plan.
Systemiq believes China’s commitment to alternative proteins could reshape the future of food production. In its recent report, China’s Food Future, the consultancy estimates that alternative proteins could supply between 35% and 55% of the country’s animal-protein demand by 2050.
Soybeans: The Biggest Vulnerability
Soybeans remain China’s biggest food-security vulnerability.
The country imports roughly 85% of the soybeans it consumes, with Brazil serving as its largest supplier. Efforts to reduce that dependency are not new, and Goldman Sachs argues they have already produced meaningful results.
Measures aimed at replacing soybean meal with alternative protein sources in animal feed, combined with improvements in feed-conversion efficiency, reduced soybean demand by 15 million tons between 2021 and 2024, equivalent to roughly 14% of current imports, according to the bank.
Efforts to curb soybean consumption are expected to intensify in the coming years through greater use of synthetic amino acids in feed formulations, further genetic improvements in livestock and more optimized feeding practices.
According to Goldman Sachs, citing targets established by China’s Ministry of Agriculture, those initiatives could reduce soybean demand by another 42 million tons between 2030 and 2035.
The bank, however, highlights limitations. Beyond a certain threshold, replacing soybean meal with synthetic amino acids may affect meat quality and livestock productivity, while questions remain about potential impacts on human health.
Biotecnology’s Role
China is also betting on mechanization, precision agriculture, irrigation and biotechnology to boost yields.
The country approved the commercialization of its first generation of genetically modified seeds in 2022. Those products were designed primarily to improve pesticide resistance, herbicide tolerance and corn yields by roughly 10%.
Adoption remains low. Goldman estimates penetration of first-generation GM seeds at only 5% during the 2025–26 crop season.
Over the next decade, however, the bank expects adoption to accelerate dramatically, reaching 90% by 2035. Such a shift could increase domestic corn production by 26 million tons, or roughly 9%.
“That is equivalent to 3.9 million hectares of arable land, enough to produce 7.8 million tons of soybeans,” Goldman estimated, based on current Chinese soybean yields.
Chinese researchers have also been working on crop varieties suited to saline-alkaline soils, potentially unlocking farmland previously considered unsuitable for cultivation.
Government data indicate China has roughly 37 million hectares of saline-alkaline land, of which about 20% could potentially be converted into agricultural use — equivalent to approximately 6% of the nation’s arable land.
Because desalination remains prohibitively expensive, Beijing has focused on developing crops adapted to these conditions.
“As a result of both demand management and production-efficiency gains, we expect soybean import dependency to decline from around 90% today to below 30% by 2035, when food consumption is expected to peak in China,” Goldman analysts wrote.
Brazilian Skepticism
In Brazil, experts remain unconvinced that such projections will materialize on schedule.
Jank points to structural challenges, including China’s rural population profile.
“Chinese farmers are still very small-scale and aging rapidly,” he said. “It is difficult to imagine this transformation happening quickly.”
Not surprisingly, rural welfare is also a priority in the new Five-Year Plan. Beijing aims to improve infrastructure and expand access to public services in rural areas as a way of keeping people on the land.
Carlos Cogo, another top agribusiness analyst in Brazil, notes that China has consistently fallen short of its soybean self-sufficiency goals, even as it succeeded in other agricultural sectors, including rice, wheat and the rebuilding of its hog herd following the devastation caused by African swine fever in the late 2010s.
“When they master the technology, things become easier,” Cogo said. “In soybeans, however, it has been a failure.”
Despite that track record, Marcos Rubin, founder and chief executive officer of Veeries, believes China will achieve at least partial success.
“They are becoming increasingly vocal about the tools they plan to use to reach those goals,” Rubin said. “It should serve as a warning sign for Brazil. Our largest customer is telling us it does not intend to keep buying all this soy indefinitely.”
What Should Brazil Do?
Brazilian analysts agree that the country needs to develop new sources of demand. For Rubin, biofuels are the most promising candidate to replace China as the primary growth engine of Brazilian agriculture.
Cogo shares that view. “Within ten years, we will safely need another 11 million hectares of soybeans to supply biofuel demand, even assuming exports continue to grow at a slower pace,” he said.
Beyond market diversification, Jank argues Brazil should reassess the economic complementarities between the productive chains of both countries as they are likely to remain closely connected amid their trade tensions with the United States.
For him, the Five-Year Plan’s most important implication is not an abrupt collapse in Chinese imports but rather a gradual transformation in how Beijing manages external dependencies.
“Brazil and China have been tied together by necessity over the past two decades,” Jank said. “But like any relationship after 25 years of intense interaction, it is bound to evolve. That evolution requires stronger institutional cooperation and a deeper bilateral dialogue.”
“The agenda with China should move beyond trade and start incorporating the transformations that are already underway.”
