India’s soyameal exports to the European Union (EU), a major market for the soya de-oiled cake, are seen facing a risk with the roll-out of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) norms by the year-end as the supply chain grapples with compliance issues.

The EUDR norms that are set to come into effect from December 30, 2025, are aimed at curbing the imports of certain products from the deforested areas. It mandates that companies exporting commodities such as coffee, cocoa and soyabean and the soyameal among others along with their derived products to the EU markets must conduct thorough deforestation analysis, detailed risk assessment and risk mitigation to ensure that these goods are not sourced from deforested areas since December 31, 2020.

“Shipments of soyameal from India to Europe are threatened by the EUDR norms” said D N Pathak, Executive Director, Soyabean Processors Association of India (SOPA), the apex trade body.

Plea to Trade Ministry

The EUDR mandates that geolocation of plots of land and evidence of land being “free from deforestation” has to be given for every consignment before it can be exported to Europe.

SOPA has written to the Commerce Ministry highlighting the challenges while seeking the government’s intervention in devising a mechanism to help exporters and the industry to comply with the proposed norms. India has been categorised as a low risk country by the EU and it meant simplified due diligence obligations for operators and the traders.

EU is a major market for the Indian soyabean meal and other products such as lecithin. “It is important to retain this market by complying with the EUDR. Europe needs a minimum of 5 lakh tons of non-GM soyabean meal per annum valued at ₹2000 crore at current prices. In addition, Europe also imports non-GM soy lecithin from India,” SOPA said.

“Our members export soyabean meal and other soy-based products to Europe and while going through the compliance checkpoints circulated by the Commerce Ministry, we find that it is very difficult and costly for individual exporters to comply with the same” SOPA said.

The trade body highlighted the fact that soyabean is grown by a large section of small and marginal farmers in the open farms and that the commodity gets traded in various lots in different mandis before being processed across various plants, makes it difficult to address the issue of traceability.

No forests involved

“Soyabean is grown in India in more than 12 million hectares of land by more than 5 million farmers, in mainly small and marginal farms of size ranging from less than 1 hectare to 5 hectares. The cropping pattern across the soyabean growing states is so diverse that more than one crop may be lying side by side. Also, the soybean processing plants in India have a capacity ranging from a minimum of 400 tonnes per day to 2,000 tonnes per day and a processing plant buys soyabean which has been grown over a large area by a large number of farmers and is offered for sale at different mandis in a single day.

“Soyabean is procured in mandis through auction, where a lot offered for auction may be from different fields. The soyabean is also procured through middlemen, stockists and traders and it may have changed hands more than once before reaching the plant, making it impossible to maintain traceability. There are other Compliance Checkpoints which can only be complied with by the Government is by a general declaration, rather than by individual exporters,” SOPA said.

Further, SOPA said the area where soyabean is grown is a part of Govemment records and being a field crop, soyabean has never been and will never be grown on any forest land. “We would request you to kindly devise and implement a mechanism for compliance with EUDR, where a declaration by a government authority nominated by Government of India will be acceptable to European Union in place of geo tagging and mapping each and every field where soyabean is grown in India,” it said.

In the current oil year 2024-25 starting October, India’s soyameal exports to the EU countries till May stood at 5.31 lakh tonnes, accounting for over a third of the total shipments of 14.63 lakh tonnes. Germany was the largest buyer with 2.12 lakh tonnes, followed by France with 1.61 lakh tonnes and Netherlands with over 1.05 lakh tonnes. India is a large producer of non-Genetically Modified soyabean in the world and the Indian soyameal is priced higher than the other origins.

Published on June 18, 2025