China's soybean book is 12.4 million tons with seven weeks left: 40% of the 2021–23 pace, in a season that began at zero

The decline was already under way. 2023/24 and 2024/25 stepped down to 24.4 and 22.5 million tons. The 2024/25 curve then froze at 22.5 in late April 2025 and never moved again: a flat line five months long. Commitments can stop mid-year, and the chart shows what that looks like.

The agreement's reported terms are 12 million tons in calendar 2025 and at least 25 million a year through 2028. The current book has met the first number. It is not on a path to the second.

For grain merchandisers and barge operators, the shape of these curves matters more than the level. The buying that fills the river happens in the first twelve weeks of the marketing year: the steep September–November run on every curve above. This fall starts from almost nothing: new-crop 2026/27 sales to China were 136,000 tons on July 9.

That leaves two ways the autumn breaks. If Beijing front-loads purchases to meet the agreement, the steep segment arrives on a river the July 21 forecast already has at drought stages: heavy demand against restricted draft. If it buys the way it bought in 2025, harvest demand stays corn-led and the rate story stays a water story.

Two limits on reading these curves. Commitments are contracts, not barges. And cancellations restate them retroactively (2024/25 shows small net reductions), while the agreement's terms run on calendar years and the curves run on marketing years.

Watch the USDA weekly export sales report, published Thursdays on a two-week lag. Between now and September it is the series that shows which way this goes.