As the president of China was flying in for a quick visit to the Windy City on Thursday, representatives from China’s 10 largest soybean crushers were signing agreements to purchase 110 million bushels of U.S. soybeans during a ceremony held in Chicago. The purchase is worth $1.8 billion and more bushels are expected to be committed tomorrow. A similar purchase agreement ceremony in 2008 was largest reported single-day export sale of U.S. soybeans in history, but this buying event – which may be larger – was split into two days.

“This is a huge event for soybean farmers, this isn’t something that happens everyday,” said Jim Call, United Soybean Board International Marketing chair and a soybean farmer from Minnesota. “We’ve had an office in China for over 25 years now. It just goes to show that our checkoff commitment for that long a period of time has really paid off.”

Soybean users in China, which purchased 825 million bushels of U.S. soybeans during the most recent marketing year, are the largest international customers of U.S. soy. The country currently imports one out of every four rows of soybeans grown by U.S. soybean farmers. “Every other row of soybeans we raise in the United States is exported and as we increase yields, any additional bushels will have to be exported, too,” Jim said.

Representatives from the Chinese companies said that they are pleased with the quality of U.S. soybeans, which they are purchasing in the form of both whole beans and soybean oil.

USB held a teleconference following the signing, which was in a room with a lot of background noise but there are some usable sound bites in here from Jim Call and the interpreter for Deng Haotian, representative from Sinograin. Here is the edited version for your listening or downloading pleasure: USB China Teleconference