As farmers harvest soybeans across Illinois this month, a key question has emerged: Where will they put them all?

The harvest is predicted to surpass the record set last year, creating mountains of the fuzzy pods, which go into everything from miso soup and soy lattes to animal feed and biodiesel fuel. But the state lost its best customer this summer when China imposed a retaliatory 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans. Shriveled demand left last year's crop sitting in storage elevators, and the price has plummeted. Farmers want to hold onto their soybeans until the price improves, but they have to find a place to put them.

"We'll see how much space we really have," says Illinois Farm Bureau Senior Economist Mike Doherty. "There will be a lot of competition for finding storage space. . . .I know farmers who have cleaned out their machine sheds where they normally put tractors. Any place they can find to put it away."

Illinois farmers harvested 611 million bushels of soybeans last year. This year the U.S. Department of Agriculture is predicting 716 million bushels for the state. In years past about a third of these bushels were loaded onto barges that traveled south to the Gulf of Mexico and then transferred to ships that passed through the Panama Canal and steamed on to China, says Mark Albertson, director of strategic market development at the Illinois Soybean Association.

But that market blew up July 6. After President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, Beijing responded with tariffs on U.S. goods guaranteed to exercise maximum pressure on the Republican political base. Soybeans are also a chief crop for Iowa, home of powerful Republican Sen. Charles Grassley.

As a result, Illinois hasn't been able to sell all the soybeans harvested last year. Instead of 10 loaded ships a week departing for China, there have been five total since the tariffs took effect, Albertson says. (Another two left the U.S. the week of Oct. 11, suggesting buyers may be scrambling for supply even at inflated prices, Bloomberg reported.) The USDA reported Sept. 28 that the stockpile of U.S. soybeans had grown 45 percent over the previous year. In Illinois, the number of bushels in storage shot up 124 percent, to more than 86 million, faster than in any other state in the Midwest.

"Usually we do a pretty good job of cleaning out the bins, but this year there hasn't been as much demand," Albertson says. "It's clearly because of the tariffs. . . .It really is a nightmare scenario for farmers right now."

Soybean prices hit a 12-month high April 12 at $10.54 a bushel. About six weeks later the price began to slide, turning north again on July 5, the day before China's tariffs took effect. But the ride isn't over. The lowest price in the past year, $8.14, was reported Sept. 18.

Brazilian and U.S. soybean prices usually run together, Albertson says, but Brazilian soybeans cost about $2.20 a bushel more now than those of its northern neighbors. "That never happens," but Chinese buyers are turning to South America as they attempt to source soybeans. The effects of the slump could linger, too. In 2012, farmers in Brazil and Argentina scrambled to fill a supply shortage created by drought in the Midwest, Doherty says. The countries converted land to soybean fields and increased their rail and shipping capacity. Once they sank capital into boosting production, they wanted to use those resources, and the world's soybean supply exceeded demand for the crop.

Rents and sale prices for farmland will suffer if soybean prices remain low. Back-to-back years of lower crop prices hurt land values, Albertson says. Soybean land in Illinois is worth $5,000 to $13,000 an acre, depending on productivity and other characteristics.

Ideally, Illinois farmers could sit on their soybeans, pray for bad weather in the winter months in South America to disrupt the growing season there and then sell when a tighter supply forced prices up. That strategy depends on having enough space to store the soybeans, though.

Some farmers are using a temporary bagging system. One texted Doherty that a friend had offered him a storage bin where he'd previously stored hog feed. Some are piling corn on the ground and covering it with tarps, reserving elevator storage for the less-hardy soybean.

They need to hope there's enough room. Farmers generally don't rent space in grain elevators; elevator operators buy their crop outright. When an elevator approaches full and operators want to discourage deliveries, they offer farmers lower prices.