Effects of Price and Transportation Costs in Soybean Trade Jo˜ ao Gilberto Mendes dos Reis 1(B ) , Pedro Amorim 2 , and Jos´ e Ant´ onio S. Cabral 2 1 Postgraduate Studies Program in Production Engineering, Paulista University, Dr. Bacelar St. 1212, S˜ao Paulo, Brazil betomendesreis@msn.com 2 Department of Engineering and Industrial Management, University of Porto, R. Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, Porto, Portugal {pamorim,jacabral}@fe.up.pt Abstract. The United States, Brazil, and Argentina are responsible for 83% of world’s soybean production. Together, they respond to more than 80% of soybean grains and soybean meal exported and for more than 60% of soybean oil exportation. This paper studies the soybean trade of these three major exporters with the top ten commercial partners of each one in order to examine the main factors that influence this relationship. We follow a network analysis approach to evaluate the level of inter- dependence between exporters and importers. Our research studies the three main soybean products: grain, meal, and oil. The findings seem to indicate that countries prefer importing soybean grains to process inside their borders due to commodity prices and logistics costs. Keywords: Soybean production · Competitiveness · Logistics impacts · Network relationship 1 Introduction The major players of soybean production in the world are the United States, Brazil and Argentina. During 2014/15 crop year, they were responsible for 83% of world’s production and for 88.9% soybean grain exports [1]. Soybean is traded as whole soybean and through its two derivative products, soybean oil and soy- bean meal, result from pressing and separating soybeans, a process known as crushing [2]. Around 85% of soybean production is crushed, where soybean meal is processed into animal feed, soy flour and proteins, and soybean oil is refined as edible oil, fat acids, and biodiesel [3]. This market is of large significance as the soybean grain exported by the United States represented in 2014 around US$ 23.8 billion, while in Brazil, in the same year, the value was US$ 23.3 billion [4, 5]. Despite these numbers, there are still many issues to be faced by the soybean supply chain to ensure animal and human supply around the world. c  IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016 Published by Springer International Publishing AG 2016. All Rights Reserved I. N¨a¨as et al. (Eds.): APMS 2016, IFIP AICT 488, pp. 563–570, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-51133-7 67