Biofuel demand is now showing up directly in soybean-crush margins, not just in biofuel-producer earnings. Bunge and ADM both reported sharply stronger soybean-processing results for the second quarter of 2026 and both raised full-year guidance, and both companies pointed to the same underlying driver: finalized federal biofuel-blending volumes and a stronger biofuel-oil market lifting the value crushers can capture. That is a measurable change from a year earlier, when the same companies were cutting bids and hedging their outlooks because that policy backdrop was still unsettled.
None of this proves that farmers who grow low-carbon-intensity soybeans will be paid extra for them. That is a separate, still-open question, and this piece treats it as one.
What "crush margin" means, and why it moved
A soybean crush plant buys soybeans and sells two things: soybean meal (an animal-feed ingredient) and soybean oil (used in food and, increasingly, in renewable diesel and other biofuels). The crush margin is roughly:
Crush margin = (value of the meal produced) + (value of the oil produced) − (cost of the soybeans) − (processing cost)
A bushel of soybeans yields a fairly fixed split of meal and oil, so the margin usually moves with whichever output market is doing something unusual. Meal demand has been comparatively stable. Oil has not: soybean oil is now competing for buyers against a much larger renewable-diesel and biofuel feedstock market than it was a few years ago, so when biofuel demand for oil strengthens, the price crushers get for their oil rises. Because the soybean cost side of the equation doesn't move in lockstep, that flows straight through to margin. That is the basic mechanism connecting a federal biofuel rule to a grain company's quarterly earnings.
Three different levers, not one "45Z effect"
It is tempting to compress all of this into "45Z is driving crush margins." That collapses three distinct mechanisms that move at different times, for different reasons, and it is a mistake worth correcting directly.
The RVO (Renewable Volume Obligation) is the EPA's annual mandate under the Renewable Fuel Standard: it sets how many gallons of renewable fuel (and how much of that from biomass-based diesel specifically) obligated parties must blend into the fuel supply. It is a volume mandate. A higher RVO means more required demand for feedstocks like soybean oil, full stop, regardless of any single producer's carbon intensity.
45Z, the Clean Fuel Production Credit, is not a volume mandate at all. It is a per-gallon federal production tax credit paid to a qualifying fuel producer, and its value is linked to the carbon intensity (CI) of the fuel: a lower-CI pathway is worth more credit per gallon than a higher-CI one. It doesn't require anyone to blend more fuel; it changes the economics of producing fuel with a given CI score once it is made.
Energy prices are a third, independent lever. Renewable diesel and other biofuels compete economically with petroleum diesel. When crude and diesel prices rise, biofuel producers can generally afford to pay more for feedstock and still clear a profit, which lifts feedstock (and by extension soybean oil, and by extension crush-margin) economics even with no change to any federal program.
A fourth factor worth naming: state low-carbon-fuel-standard (LCFS) style programs, like California's, create their own CI-linked credit markets that run alongside, and interact with, 45Z, and they can make a given gallon of biofuel more or less attractive to produce depending on where it is sold, independent of the federal RVO or 45Z value.
Bunge's and ADM's disclosures for Q2 2026 actually name more than one of these at once. Reuters reported that Bunge's improvement was attributed partly to finalized U.S. biofuel-blending mandates removing uncertainty that had weighed on prior quarters, and partly to higher crude prices lifting soybean-oil values: two separate mechanisms, both real, reported together. ADM's own release for the quarter cites the finalized 2026-2027 RVO, higher global energy prices, improved crush margins and utilization, and roughly $100 million of positive mark-to-market and timing effects across its Ag Services & Oilseeds segment: again, several distinct drivers, not one. Neither company's results should be read as a clean read on 45Z's effect in isolation, and this site is not treating them that way.
Both companies are also large, diversified, multinational businesses, and neither quarter's results can be attributed to U.S. biofuel policy alone. Bunge's Q2 2026 figures reflect its enlarged post-Viterra-acquisition footprint, and both companies' results include grain-merchandising, logistics, and non-U.S. crush operations that move on their own supply-and-demand dynamics unrelated to any U.S. biofuel rule.
The numbers, read carefully
Bunge reported processing 11.524 million metric tons of soybeans in the second quarter of 2026, up from 9.304 million metric tons in the prior-year quarter, with adjusted EBIT in its Soybean Processing & Refining segment rising to $445 million from $304 million a year earlier. The company raised its full-year 2026 adjusted EPS outlook to $9.25–$9.75, up from a prior $9.00–$9.50 range set just a quarter earlier. Reuters attributed the improvement partly to the finalized blending mandates and partly to firmer crude-linked oil values, alongside Bunge's own commercial execution.
ADM reported Ag Services & Oilseeds operating profit of $867 million for the quarter, up 129% from $379 million a year earlier, with its crushing subsegment specifically improving to $363 million of operating profit from $33 million. ADM raised its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $5.15–$5.60, up from $4.15–$4.70. As part of the same release, ADM also announced plans to expand crush capacity across several U.S. plants, a separate, narrower story with its own timeline and bushel figures that we cover in ADM's four-plant crush capacity expansion.
These are the companies' own reported, unaudited figures, drawn from earnings releases and press coverage of them. FDCIC.com has not independently reperformed either company's accounting, and citing a number here is not a verification of it.
The turnaround did not happen overnight
The improvement in tone across these two companies has been building for over a year, and it tracks the RVO's path through the federal rulemaking process more closely than any single quarter's earnings call suggests. In June 2025, ADM cut cash soybean bids at its Decatur, Illinois plant sharply (one report put the move at roughly 60 cents a bushel) as the market braced for an EPA blending-volume proposal that traders feared would come in below industry expectations. By February 2026, ADM was still framing its 2026 outlook cautiously, citing continued delay in finalizing biofuel policy as a drag on both its own results and on customers' willingness to commit to deals. By April 2026, Bunge was citing the newly finalized blending mandates as a reason to raise guidance, and by August 2026 both companies had done so. The point is not the specific dates: this was a policy-uncertainty story before it was a margin story, and the companion capacity-expansion piece above covers the plant-level response in more detail than belongs here.
Where farmers actually feel this: basis, not the futures screen
National soybean futures prices are set by global supply and demand and do not move meaningfully because a single company's crush margin improved. The place this trend is most likely to show up for an individual farmer is local basis: the difference between the cash price offered at a local elevator or plant and the futures price.
A University of Illinois farmdoc study examined six soybean crush plants that opened between 2021 and 2025, using elevator-level pricing data and a staggered difference-in-differences design to isolate the plants' effect. It found that a new crush plant increased local soybean basis by roughly 9.6 cents per bushel within a 50-mile radius, with the effect front-loaded: basis improvements reportedly reached as much as 30 cents per bushel in the first few months after a plant opened before settling toward that smaller average. That is evidence of a real, local, structural shift in demand for nearby bushels driven by new crush capacity, but it is a basis effect tied to proximity to a specific plant, not a carbon-intensity premium, and it predates and is separate from any 45Z-linked payment. For background on what a farmer-facing crush plant relationship can and can't include, see our 45Z for Farmers guide.
The open question this doesn't answer: is there a low-CI soybean premium?
Everything above is about aggregate margin and aggregate local demand. None of it establishes that an individual farmer will be paid more for growing or delivering a lower-carbon-intensity soybean.
USDA's finalized FD-CIC (Feedstock Carbon Intensity Calculator) now produces a field-level CI score for soybeans, corn, sorghum, and spring canola, and Treasury's proposed 45Z regulations anticipate an FD-CIC-derived adjustment feeding into the 45ZCF-GREET model used to calculate lifecycle emissions (a proposal, not yet a final rule). That is the plumbing that would need to exist for a CI-linked payment to reach a farmer. It is not proof that such a payment exists, is standard, or is coming at any particular size.
Whether a crusher or biofuel producer actually pays a farmer more for a lower CI score depends entirely on the commercial structure a specific buyer offers: a flat payment for adopting a specific practice, a straight per-bushel premium, a payment scaled to the delivered CI score, or, just as plausibly, nothing at all beyond ordinary basis. Public evidence does not yet establish which of these models is winning, or whether any of them will be widely offered. Farmers evaluating a specific program should ask exactly that question of the buyer rather than assume that record crush margins imply a personal payout. Our due-diligence guide and low-CI feedstocks guide walk through the questions worth asking before signing on.
What this trend does and doesn't establish
It establishes that biofuel demand (through the RVO, energy prices, and to a lesser extent 45Z's downstream effects on producer economics) is now a visible driver of soybean-crush margins at two of the largest processors in the country, after more than a year of policy uncertainty suppressing that same margin. It establishes that new crush capacity has, historically, moved local soybean basis measurably in the study farmdoc examined.
It does not establish that ADM or Bunge deserve any rating or endorsement from this site: we are not scoring either company. It does not establish a going rate for carbon-differentiated soybeans. And it does not establish that the basis or margin gains reported in national or company-level results will reach every farmer within trucking distance of a plant, since basis effects are local and program terms vary by buyer. Those remain separate, unresolved questions, and we'll keep tracking them as public evidence develops.