Argentina, China, and the Changing Geography of Risk

Introduction

Global agricultural markets and wildlife crime are usually treated as separate worlds: one governed by trade statistics, futures contracts, and macroeconomic policy; the other by anti-poaching patrols and customs seizures. In reality, they are deeply entangled. When major buyers reorient their sourcing of soybeans, beef, or animal feed, it reshapes land use, rural livelihoods, state revenue, and the opportunity structure for both legal and illegal economies. Those changes can open frontiers for deforestation, weaken regulatory oversight, and intensify competition over marine resources—all of which create fertile ground for wildlife crime.

Argentina sits at the center of one of these entanglements. As a major exporter of soybeans and beef, it has become a critical supplier to China, whose demand for animal feed and meat has reshaped South American landscapes. Trade tensions between the United States and China have amplified this role, as tariffs and political shocks push Beijing to pivot away from U.S. suppliers and toward Brazil and Argentina.Reuters+3Cell+3yeutter-institute.unl.edu+3 Recent data show Chinese soybean imports in September 2025 hitting near-record levels—12.87 million tons in a single month—driven heavily by purchases from South America instead of the U.S.Successful Farming+1 Argentina, in turn, has seen a surge in raw soybean exports to China after temporarily suspending a 26% export tax, making its beans several dollars per bushel cheaper than competitors.Reuters+4Expana+4Reuters+4

At the same time, China’s distant-water fishing fleet is exerting enormous pressure on marine ecosystems off Argentina’s coast. Hundreds of largely Chinese squid-jigging vessels mass at the edge of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) near “Mile 201,” exploiting weak high-seas governance while reports document illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, shark finning, and the deliberate killing of marine mammals.ScienceDirect+6Environmental Justice Foundation+6Oceanographic+6 These vessels operate in parallel with the bulk shipping infrastructure that moves soybeans, beef, and other commodities across the Atlantic—and with the same maritime systems that carry an estimated 72–90% of trafficked wildlife products worldwide.UNODC+3OCCRP+3IFAW+3

This paper argues that agricultural market volatility—especially shifts in China’s sourcing of soy and beef—intersects with wildlife crime through two main pathways. First, it drives land-use change and governance stress in Argentina’s terrestrial ecosystems, particularly the Gran Chaco, where expanding soybean and cattle frontiers erode habitat, ease access for hunters, and create opportunities for terrestrial wildlife trafficking. Second, it occurs in the same geopolitical theater and logistical infrastructure as marine wildlife crime, especially IUU fishing and associated shark fin and ray products, creating overlapping networks and shared vulnerabilities.

Seen through an intelligence lens, these are not separate problems but a single evolving risk landscape in which agricultural trade, distant-water fishing, and wildlife trafficking converge.

Argentina, China, and the Volatile Geography of Soy and Beef

Over the last two decades, global soybean trade has become one of the central pillars of the world food system. China, which uses soy mainly for animal feed, is by far the largest importer. Trade war dynamics between the United States and China beginning in 2018 reshaped these flows. When Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans, U.S. exports to China fell by roughly three-quarters in the 2018–2019 period, pushing China toward Brazil and, increasingly, Argentina.Mises Institute+3Farmonaut®+3yeutter-institute.unl.edu+3

Those shifts never fully reversed. Analyses of trade data show that even when temporary truces were negotiated, Chinese buyers continued to deepen relationships with South American suppliers, both for risk diversification and price reasons.Financial Times+4Cell+4Farm Policy News+4 By 2024–2025, Argentine soybean exports were hitting multi-year highs. Reuters and sector analysts report that exports of unprocessed soybeans from the 2024/25 harvest reached about 8.8 million metric tons—a six-year record—driven largely by Chinese demand.Tridge+3Reuters+3The Beef Site+3 A temporary suspension of Argentina’s soybean export tax in 2025 made its beans roughly US$3 per bushel cheaper than competitors’, triggering a surge of Chinese purchases.Expana+2The China-Global South Project+2

At the same time, China has begun cautiously experimenting with imports of Argentine soymeal, not just raw beans. In 2019, Beijing approved Argentine soymeal imports; in 2025, Bunge chartered the first such cargo, a 30,000-ton shipment, signalling interest in diversifying feed sources.Reuters+1 Though that particular shipment was later diverted to Vietnam, the episode underscores how quickly sourcing decisions can change in response to price, quality concerns, or diplomatic shifts.

Beef markets show similar volatility. China has become the dominant buyer for South American beef, importing a record 2.87 million metric tons in 2024.Reuters In early 2025, China temporarily suspended some beef imports from firms in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay amid domestic oversupply and low prices, demonstrating how quickly regulatory pressure can be applied to manage internal price dynamics.Reuters+1 These suspensions can sharply impact producer countries’ incentives, pushing them to seek new markets or intensify production in ways that put further pressure on land and ecosystems.

From an intelligence perspective, what matters is not simply that China buys more or less soy and beef in a given year, but that its purchasing decisions function as shocks to producer economies. Those shocks propagate through land markets, infrastructure planning, rural livelihoods, and state budgets, altering the enabling environment within which both legal agriculture and illegal activities—including wildlife crime—operate.

Land-Use Change, Biodiversity Loss, and Terrestrial Wildlife Risk in the Gran Chaco

The Gran Chaco, a vast dry forest and savanna mosaic spanning Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil, is South America’s second-largest forest after the Amazon—and one of the most deforested regions on the planet.The Guardian+3The Nature Conservancy+3World Economic Forum+3 Over the last two decades, roughly a quarter of Argentina’s Gran Chaco forest has been cleared, primarily for soybean cultivation and cattle ranching.World Economic Forum Reports+3The Nature Conservancy+3Earth Observatory+3 NASA and other assessments show that soybean production has been a direct driver of deforestation since the 2000s, as producers searched for untapped land to meet rising global demand.Earth Observatory+1

Recent research from the Stockholm Environment Institute and collaborators explicitly attributes biodiversity decline in the Gran Chaco to agricultural commodity supply chains, especially soy and beef aimed at export markets.ScienceDirect+2SEI+2 One study finds that key importers of Argentine soy—including the European Union, Vietnam, and China—are among those most associated with deforestation-driven biodiversity loss in the Chaco.Mongabay In parallel, work on jaguars, pumas, and other predators documents that about one-third of critical jaguar habitat in the Gran Chaco has been lost since the mid-1980s, largely due to expansion of croplands and pastures.Wiley Online Library+3Mongabay+3latam.ufl.edu+3

Ecologically, this land conversion has several effects relevant to wildlife crime. First, it fragments habitats and erodes connectivity, pushing wildlife into smaller, more accessible refuges. Second, it opens road networks and human access into previously remote forest, lowering the cost of hunting and facilitating the movement of poachers. Third, it alters local economies and social structures, sometimes displacing Indigenous communities and smallholders, who may become economically vulnerable or marginalized and thus more likely to engage in or tolerate illicit activities, including hunting for bushmeat or the wildlife trade.IFPRI+2The Guardian+2

Scholars of environmental crime have long noted that trade restrictions, commodity booms, and price differentials can incentivize smuggling. A U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis on agricultural and wildlife smuggling emphasizes that taxes, tariffs, and trade bans create gaps between producer and consumer prices, with the difference becoming the return to smuggling.Economic Research Service In a region like the Gran Chaco, where land is rapidly commodified for soy and beef and law enforcement capacity is stretched, those dynamics can drive various forms of illicit trade: smuggling of cattle into protected areas, illegal logging to clear new pasture, and poaching of high-value wildlife species in landscapes newly opened by roads and deforestation.

Evidence from Latin America broadly supports this. A recent analysis of wildlife crime incidents in Hispanic America found nearly 2,000 seizures and poaching cases recorded across 18 countries between 2017 and 2022, highlighting increasing pressure on both terrestrial and marine species.Mongabay+1 UNODC and other agencies have also documented convergence between forest crime and wildlife crime: the same routes, the same actors, and the same laundering systems carry illegal timber, bushmeat, live animals, and high-value body parts.ReVista+4eia-international.org+4UNODC+4

In this context, agricultural market volatility driven by China’s soy and beef demand can be seen as a structuring force. When global prices rise or Chinese buyers shift suddenly toward Argentine supply—especially under tax holidays or tariff shocks—local incentives to clear land, stretch regulations, or overlook environmental infractions intensify. That does not automatically cause wildlife crime, but it creates the fuel: roads, frontier settlements, unregulated landscapes, and a culture of rule-bending around land and resource use. Wildlife trafficking networks, which already operate through Latin America–to–Asia routes, are well positioned to exploit this environment.ReVista+2OCCRP+2

Marine Wildlife Crime and the Distant-Water Fleet off Argentina

While terrestrial impacts unfold in the Gran Chaco, a parallel story is playing out at sea. Just beyond Argentina’s 200-nautical-mile EEZ boundary, at an area colloquially known as “Mile 201,” fleets of distant-water fishing vessels—dominated by Chinese squid-jiggers—congregate to target the Argentine shortfin squid (Illex argentinus) and other species. Investigations by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and other organizations describe “hundreds” of vessels plundering squid populations in the Southwest Atlantic, driving a keystone species toward collapse.ScienceDirect+3Environmental Justice Foundation+3Oceanographic+3

Crew testimonies in these reports paint a stark picture: exploitative working conditions, physical abuse, document confiscation, and wage theft, alongside widespread IUU fishing practices. Fishers interviewed by EJF report routine shark finning, deliberate capture or killing of marine mammals such as South American fur seals, use of illegal gear, and extensive nighttime fishing under powerful lights that attract squid and other species.Congress.gov+6Environmental Justice Foundation+6Oceanographic+6 Several specific vessels—such as the Hua Li 8 and Hong Pu 16—have been blacklisted or detained by Argentina or other states for illegal fishing and labor abuses.media.odi.org+3Global Fishing Watch+3National Geographic+3

From a wildlife-crime standpoint, the significance of these fleets is twofold. First, they directly impact marine wildlife through overfishing, bycatch, shark finning, and marine mammal kills—activities that often contravene domestic laws, regional fisheries management measures, or international conservation agreements. Second, they operate within the same global shipping and trade architecture that carries bulk commodities like soy and beef. WWF-linked and INTERPOL-supported analyses estimate that 72–90% of illegal wildlife products by volume are trafficked by sea, hidden within the enormous flow of containerized trade.UNODC+4OCCRP+4IFAW+4

In other words, the waters off Argentina are simultaneously:

• a corridor for industrial fishing supplying Chinese and global seafood markets;
• a theater of documented IUU fishing and marine wildlife abuse; and
• part of the same maritime system through which Argentina’s soy and beef exports travel toward Asia, and through which illegal shark fins, ray products, and other wildlife contraband move in the opposite or parallel directions.AP News+3Oceanographic+3Earth League International+3

Agricultural market volatility affects this marine context in subtle but important ways. When China seeks to secure protein sources—whether via imported soy for feed, imported beef, or increased domestic aquaculture and seafood consumption—it leans more heavily on both terrestrial suppliers like Argentina and its own distant-water fishing fleet. Chinese fisheries policies provide substantial subsidies for distant-water operations, and the fleet has grown into the world’s largest, with at least 2,500 vessels and an estimated annual catch of around 4 million metric tons.media.odi.org+2Congress.gov+2 As terrestrial protein sources become more politically or economically volatile due to trade wars and tariffs, the incentive to secure marine protein can strengthen, sharpening pressure on fish stocks and associated wildlife.

At the same time, major law-enforcement actions underscore how environmental and wildlife crimes at sea are increasingly interwoven. Interpol-led operations in Latin America, such as Operation Madre Tierra, have seized tons of shark and ray fins and documented fishing violations alongside illegal logging and mining, revealing transnational routes stretching from Latin America to Asia.AP News+1 Shark fin trafficking investigations similarly show Latin America–to–Asia networks moving fins through the same ports and shipping lanes used for legal seafood and agricultural exports.Earth League International+2Florida International University+2

Taken together, agriculture and marine sectors are not separate spheres. They are parallel fronts in a broader struggle over how natural resources are extracted, traded, and regulated in a world where China’s demand, U.S.–China trade volatility, and South American production patterns intersect.

Convergence, Volatility, and the Intelligence Lens

To connect these dots analytically, an intelligence framing is extremely useful. Instead of viewing soy trade, beef exports, IUU fishing, and wildlife trafficking as separate policy silos, an intelligence-led approach sees them as interacting networks driven by overlapping incentives, logistics, and governance failures.

In Argentina and the Southwest Atlantic, several features stand out:

• Shared infrastructure and corridors. The same ports, shipping lanes, and logistics systems that handle bulk soy and beef also carry legal seafood and, concealed within containers, illegal wildlife products such as shark fins, sea cucumbers, and other marine species.ReVista+4OCCRP+4IFAW+4
• Convergent criminal actors. Studies of environmental crime convergence show that the same transnational syndicates may be involved in logging, drug trafficking, and wildlife smuggling, using profits from one domain to finance another.ReVista+4DNB Portal+4eia-international.org+4 In Latin America, UNODC and academic work document how drug trafficking proceeds, for example, can be reinvested in wildlife or timber trafficking, and vice versa.
• Price shocks and regulatory gaps. Tariffs, export-tax suspensions, and temporary import bans—such as China’s decisions on U.S. soybeans or South American beef—expose farmers, processors, and fleets to sudden revenue swings.Economic Research Service+6Farmonaut®+6yeutter-institute.unl.edu+6 Those swings can make illicit side businesses more attractive and weaken compliance with environmental rules.
• Weak enforcement in frontiers. The Gran Chaco’s deforestation crisis has unfolded despite Argentina’s Forest Law and court rulings, in large part because enforcement capacity and political will have lagged behind economic pressures.The Guardian+3IFPRI+3ilas.columbia.edu+3 Off the coast, the Mile 201 squid fleet exploits a legal gray zone just outside Argentina’s EEZ where oversight is minimal.SeafoodSource+2Oceanographic+2 Frontier conditions—thin state presence, ambiguous jurisdiction, competing claims—are classic enabling environments for both organized crime and wildlife trafficking.

From your own perspective as an intelligence-trained conservation practitioner, this convergence suggests a set of practical questions:

• How do changes in China’s soy and beef procurement patterns correlate with deforestation spikes or enforcement lapses in the Chaco?
• Are there discernible linkages between ports that export bulk agricultural commodities to China and ports flagged in shark fin or wildlife seizures?
• Do the same logistics firms, shipping lines, or financial intermediaries appear in both legal agricultural trade and wildlife-crime investigations?
• Can indicators and warnings—such as sudden shipping surges, new road construction into forest frontiers, or anomalous vessel behavior near the EEZ—be used to anticipate both environmental damage and wildlife crime?

The answers to those questions will not always be straightforward or linear. But they move the discussion from a “sectoral” frame (agriculture over here, fisheries over there, wildlife crime in yet another bucket) to a systems frame in which all are components of a single, volatile political-economy shaped by trade wars, commodity demand, and governance capacity.

Conclusion

Agricultural market volatility is not merely a problem for farm incomes or national balance-of-trade statistics. In countries like Argentina, where soy and beef form the backbone of export revenue, shifts in China’s purchasing decisions reverberate through forests, grasslands, and coastal waters. The surge in Argentine soybean exports to China, driven by tariff-induced trade realignment and temporary export-tax suspensions, has unfolded against the backdrop of intense deforestation and habitat loss in the Gran Chaco—much of it directly linked to soy and cattle production.The Guardian+7The Nature Conservancy+7Earth Observatory+7

Simultaneously, China’s distant-water fishing fleet has emerged as a major driver of marine wildlife exploitation in the Southwest Atlantic, operating just beyond Argentina’s jurisdiction and engaging in IUU fishing, shark finning, and marine mammal killing.Global Fishing Watch+7Environmental Justice Foundation+7Oceanographic+7 These operations share maritime space, logistical infrastructure, and often port facilities with the bulk commodity trade that moves Argentine soy and beef toward Asian markets—and with the shipping channels that carry illegal wildlife products worldwide.UNODC+5OCCRP+5IFAW+5

In this sense, agricultural market volatility and wildlife crime are two manifestations of the same underlying dynamics: powerful external demand, rapid reconfiguration of trade relationships, frontier expansion into poorly governed spaces, and the adaptability of organized crime to exploit gaps in enforcement and policy. A purely agricultural or purely conservationist lens will miss these interconnections.

An intelligence-informed approach—one that combines trade data, land-use analysis, maritime monitoring, financial tracking, and on-the-ground human intelligence—can help make them visible. It allows practitioners to see how a sudden soybean deal in Beijing can, months later, translate into a new road in the Chaco, a spike in deforestation alerts, and a rise in hunting pressure on jaguars; or how a cluster of squid-jiggers at Mile 201 may be linked, via logistics and finance, to broader patterns of marine wildlife trafficking and labor abuse.