Last year at this time, a grain elevator just south of Hillsboro, ND, had filled three trainloads of soybeans headed to the Pacific Northwest in a single week to meet orders from China, reports CNBC.
This year with trade war, it's a different story.
With the lack of soybean demand at Pacific Northwest ports, that has meant local grain elevators in the Dakotas have been lowering cash prices for beans.
"You've got these [grain] elevators in North Dakota, where all of a sudden their market they basically established themselves based upon China is now closed," Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, told CNBC. "They call them 'refugee' soybeans because they don't really have a home anymore."
