March 16

3/16 – A big driver of soy-oil prices is biofuel demand. On 6/13/25, the EPA released a new Renewable Fuel Standard mandating a 2B gallon jump in renewable diesel production to 5.61B gallons in 2026. At that time, the EPA slashed the Renewable Identification Numbers on imported biofuel feedstocks (like used cooking oil from China) by 50%. It means that for the same volume of fuel, foreign feedstocks would only get half the energy credits as domestic - creating an incentive to use domestic feedstocks, particularly soy-oil. Now, the EPA has gone even further. On 2/4/26, the EPA proposed eliminating all credits on imported feedstocks. Good news for farmers. Bad news for oil users. Soy-oil futures, that were $.57/lb a month ago, have climbed to $.6677 (3/13). In last week’s WASDE, the USDA dropped soy-oil usage for biofuel from 14.8B to 14.0B pounds - but that’s still 46.3% of total soy-oil production for the 2025/26 crop year.