EUDR guide for exporters
EUDR guide for soy exporters
Under the EU Deforestation Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1115), the company that brings your soy into the EU has to collect your plot data before the goods reach customs. This guide sums up what it will ask you for. Print it or save it as a PDF and share it with your team.
Which products are covered
Soya beans (1201), soya flour and meal (1208 10), soya oil (1507) and oil-cake (2304). Lecithin and protein concentrates are outside Annex I.
What is specific to soy
- Most soy farms exceed 4 ha, so almost every farm goes in as a polygon. In Brazil the farm’s CAR (Cadastro Ambiental Rural) is usually the starting point for the perimeter.
- The cargo has to be linked to farm deliveries to the silo: buyers ask for the delivery list per period and how traced grain is kept separate.
- Legal under national law is not enough on its own: clearing authorised after 31 December 2020 still keeps that soy out of the EU market.
What a soy buyer will ask you for
Farm identification
Farm name, producer name, country and the rural registry number where there is one, such as the CAR in Brazil.
Field polygons
One polygon per field or farm in GeoJSON, closed, without holes and with six decimals.
Silo intake records
Which farms delivered to the silo or warehouse, on which dates and in what quantities, for the period the cargo was loaded from.
Separate storage
How traced grain is kept in its own bins or silos, and how the cargo or barge is linked to them.
Crushing records
For meal, oil or oil-cake: which bean lots went into the production batch you ship.
Harvest season
The season of the grain, which buyers compare with satellite images of each field.
Environmental documents
Environmental licences, proof that the area is not under embargo and compliance with forest law. Your buyer decides which documents it needs.
Example: a soy cargo loaded from one silo
A trading company buys soybeans from the farms around one silo and loads part of a vessel bound for an EU crusher. The silo takes grain from many farms during the harvest, so the first question is which deliveries ended up in the cargo.
The silo keeps traced grain in separate bins and records every truck: farm, date and weight. From those records the exporter lists the farms behind the cargo and builds a GeoJSON with one polygon per farm, using the rural registry perimeter as a starting point and checking it against the fields.
The buyer receives the polygons, the delivery list, the harvest season and the environmental documents. If the vessel carries grain from several silos or exporters, the buyer can split it across several statements, each with its own polygons.
Mistakes that get soy data sent back
- The silo or the port terminal given as the location.
- Polygons drawn from a GPS track with a vertex every few metres, which makes the file too heavy. Two points are enough for a straight edge.
- Registry perimeters with crossing lines or holes exported without fixing them. TRACES rejects invalid polygons.
- Grain from untraced farms added to a traced bin, which leaves the whole cargo uncovered.
Key dates
- 31 December 2020: cut-off date. Land deforested after this date cannot supply the EU market. It does not move with the postponements.
- 30 December 2026: large and medium-sized EU companies must comply, and so must every company for timber products that were under the old EU Timber Regulation.
- 30 June 2027: micro and small EU companies.
Questions from soy exporters
We sell soybean meal and oil, not beans. What does the buyer need from us?
Meal, oil-cake and oil are in Annex I like the beans. The buyer needs the farms behind the beans you crushed, so each batch of meal or oil has to be linked to the bean lots that went into it.
How many farms can one statement hold?
TRACES publishes system limits: up to 1,000 producers per commodity and 10,000 per statement, and 25 MB of geolocation in total. A large cargo can be split across several statements, for example by silo or by exporter. These limits may change.
Does a small field under 4 ha also need a polygon?
No, a point is enough for plots up to 4 ha. Most soy fields are larger, so polygons are the norm, but a small field can go in as a point with its Area.
One farm supplies several cargoes in a season. Do we map it each time?
No. The polygon stays the same. What changes for each cargo is the delivery record that links the farm to it.
The basics, for every product
Whatever the product, the EU buyer needs the same base data: where each plot is (a point up to 4 ha, a polygon above, six decimals), who produced there and in which country, when it was harvested, and information showing that the land was not deforested after 31 December 2020 and that production followed the law of your country.
How to prepare this data and share it with all your buyers