The Complexity of Soy
The global food chain has developed its perennial villains in the eyes of environmentally conscious consumers: Monsanto, Bayer, Ronald McDonald, and so forth. It’s easy to hate a company that makes billions selling poison and putting science in the plants, or a filthy rich clown that forgoes any concern for ethics and sustainability in order to sell unhealthy food at a cheap price. Yet, at a time when the agricultural industry grapples with how to produce higher yields to feed growing populations and citizens become more aware of the environmental impacts of food production, it can be hard to find scalable solutions. The problem is that the world needs to feed nearly 8 billion people and counting with a declining interest in farm labor and unstable access to fresh water. Additional stress is brought about by inequality. Developed countries consume roughly 40% of both grain and animal protein, even though they represent only 18% of the global population. Developed countries do, however, care more about the effects of their consumer choices. This results in a demand for information on what products are “good” or “bad” and a vast landscape of twisted graphs and opinion pieces aimed at confirming the biases of everyone from level 5 vegans to subscribers of BEEF magazine. Needless to say, the big picture of food production is complicated, and right smack dab in the middle of it is our curious little friend, the soybean.
There might not be a more misrepresented or misunderstood food source than soybeans. Perhaps this should be expected from a plant who is used worldwide as a replacement for meat and dairy, yet is simultaneously the most important and preferred source of protein in animal feed. Many people probably couldn’t even tell you how it grows — Is it a tree? A bush? Does it grow underground like peanuts? — well, actually it’s an herbaceous annual plant in the family Fabaceae, or yes, it’s a bush.
Check it out.
With the recent catastrophe of the burning rainforests in Brazil, a lot of public attention has been brought to the role soybeans play in deforestation and who should be held responsible. Environmentalists blame animal agriculture for feeding it to the cows; meat lovers point right back at fake butter, soymilk, and tofu. The truth is it’s complicated. The following paragraphs will attempt to shine some unbiased light on the soybean. We will take a peek at its historical journey from East to West (via Nazi Germany), and explain some of the basics about its production and various uses. Hopefully, by the end, you will have no idea how to feel about soybeans but you won’t yell at anybody about them either.
From Soy Boy to Soy Man
Born — like nearly 20% of people — in China, the soybean was initially used for fermented or processed foods, oils, and as a nitrogen source for fertilizers. Soy’s special abilities were present from an early age. Chinese farmers learned that by planting soy in their crop rotations, thanks to its nitrogen-fixing properties, they wouldn’t need to leave land fallow before growing the next crop. In the late 1800s, when some pushy imperialist neighbors — Japan and Russia — started taking over parts of Northeast China, soybeans made their big move. External invaders are not known to appreciate agricultural diversity and prefer to cash crop their colonies. Thus, Japan used the region to produce soybean cake and shipped it home to fertilize their rice fields. Russia sent soybeans to Europe, feeding the growing need for vegetable oils to make everything from margarine to cosmetics.
Japan shocked the world in 1894 by besting the region’s previous Superpower, China, in the Sino-Japanese War. Soy production then increased thanks to additional hungry soldiers wandering around. In response, Russia agreed to ally with China in exchange for building railroads in the Northeast region and then promptly lost the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. Japan took control of the railroads, leased the peninsula at the end of the tracks from the Chinese, and sat upon their throne as the supreme leader of the international soy trade. To be fair, in the early 1900s there wasn’t much demand for soy, but that would soon change as a mustached supervillain became the world’s largest importer of soybeans. In the early 1930s, Germany and Japan formed a bond stronger than racism, and it was built around the import and export of soy.
Across the pond, the United States had started to dabble in soybean oil as economic development had created a demand for a higher-fat diet and of course, soap. After bringing back over 4,500 types of soybeans from China, U.S. agriculturalists began working out which varieties grew best and how they could be used. When the Great Depression hit, President Roosevelt signed the Agriculture Adjustment Act which put production limits on U.S. crops in an attempt to raise their value. Affected crops included corn, wheat, and cotton, but soy was left out, meaning there were no restrictions on soy production. In the late 1930s ‘Chemurgy’ became the magic word as demand rose to extract chemical components for industry out of American agriculture. Soybeans popularity grew as the oil became used in a wide array of household products. America’s favorite entrepreneur, Henry Ford, even made a car out of soybeans, and would have made a lot more if World War II hadn’t broken out and suspended auto production.
World War II affected U.S. soy production in another, more substantial way. The U.S. imported coconuts and palm kernels for their high levels of glycerine which were needed to make explosives, as well as for their oil properties needed in the production of rubber used for tires in cars and airplanes. As can be imagined, explosives and tires are key ingredients in a country’s aspirations for effective war-fighting. Once engaged in the Pacific, the U.S. was cut off from its sources of tropical oils as 97% came from areas under Japanese control. Suffering from a loss of access, the U.S. prohibited the use of its stockpile of tropical oils for anything other than military purposes. This left a demand for homegrown crops to fill the gaps in domestic oil needs. Suddenly, as a crop that magically helped strengthen the soil when cycled with America’s first love, corn, soy found itself heavily subsidized by the government. By the end of the war, the U.S. was the world’s leading producer of soybeans, and still is to this very day.
In attempts to increase soy production, the United States started playing around with soybeans seeds to try and get them to grow better in the southern states. In 1974 the Missippi River flooded, badly, and a lot of crops were lost. A decision was made to see if some of this new “Southern Soy” could be grown in the Southern hemisphere during what would be American winter. Long story short, it worked and now Brazil is the world’s second-largest soy producer.
From Bush to Belly
So now we know how soy took over the world, but none of that knowledge tells us who is at fault for our current less-rainforest problems. Left-leaning environmentalists will claim that most soy is grown for animal consumption. Meat-loving conservatives will say most soy is grown for human consumption. The complicated answer is they are both right. This idea that soy is either grown for animals or grown for humans is a fallacy. When soybeans are processed they are crushed and separated into oil and meal. Most soybean meal goes toward animal consumption and most soybean oil goes towards human consumption. The two are inseparably tied. There are of course soybeans grown exclusively for either. Cows don’t get to chew on our edamame shells, and likewise, some amounts of soy are roasted whole and given to bourgeoisie livestock. However, their respective percentages are a small portion of total soy production.
Before we go any further, perhaps it is wise to get into some of those percentages so we have a broad scope of what international soy looks like. Any agricultural and global trade statistics should, of course, be taken with coarse grains of salt because there are discrepancies between reports from different agencies. Additionally, any aggregate data suffers from a lack of regional consensus on how data is collected and, naturally, errors in the reporting itself. Plus most of the fun fancy infographics are a few years old, but we can still get a rough idea.
So who is growing soy?
Now, what are they doing with it? (The answer is selling it to China)
By now you can probably feel the complexity augmenting. You may notice the separation of soybeans and soybean meal. China primarily imports the whole beans and processes everything in-house. Meanwhile, the EU takes in both whole beans and soybean meal. What the dark blue pie slices labeled “Crush” are referring to, are all the soybeans that countries keep and literally crush themselves creating both the soybean meal and the soybean oil for domestic use and export.
So what happens to the oil?
So lets Recap. The United States grows the most soybeans. Brazil exports the most soybeans. China imports the most soybeans. Argentina exports the most soybean meal and soybean oil. The EU imports the most soybean meal. Finally, India imports the most soybean oil. This is just importing and exporting though, leaving out the actual use or consumption. But that probably isn’t too hard to imagine. China consumes the most soybean meal/oil, followed by the U.S. and then Brazil, except that the EU slips in front of Brazil regarding soybean meal consumption.
So now that we have an overview of where soy is born and where it moves to when it’s ready to get a job and be an adult, let us revisit our initial conundrum: the rainforests are vanishing, soy has something to do with it, and everything eats soy. Also, just to add another layer of complexity, the deforestation isn’t just in the rainforest, but also in a tropical savannah called the Cerrado. Admittedly, a savannah is less eco-sexy than a rainforest. Perhaps you don’t have the emotional bandwidth to start caring about deforestation if it isn’t in the Amazon, but if you do the Cerrado is also a problem.
For what purpose the forests are being cleared is another complicated question. On the surface, it’s easy to say cattle ranching. But after ranchers have used a pasture, they often sell it to farmers, primarily soy farmers, and then go clear some more land for cattle. So soy has more blame to shoulder even if it’s not always the one holding the smoking chainsaw.
What Do We Do?!
One might be drawn to conclude that if we eat substantially less beef, then the problem is solved. Beef and soy are the major reasons for deforestation in South America and most of the soy gets fed to cows. Except that it doesn’t. In fact, only a small percentage of soy is fed to both meat and dairy cows. Around half of all soy fed to animals goes to chickens, with around a quarter going to pigs, and the remainder divided among all other farmed animals, including fish. Okay, so if we just just stop eating animals and animal products, they’ll stop cutting down the rainforests right? Well, here is the difficulty in that logic. Remember, most soybeans get divided into animal feed and oil. Humans just love that sweet vegetable fat, and over 2/3rds of it comes from soy. If we stopped feeding soy to animals we would still need to plant nearly the same amount of oilseed crops to meet demand, there would just be a bunch of mashed pulp leftover and nowhere to put it.
So vegetable oil is the problem? Well, part of the problem is that vegetable oils are an incredibly useful product, of which soy is the most cost-effective, provided there is a demand for soybean meal as well. There are higher yield oil crops that give more oil and less meal, but they all have their respective setbacks: needing more fertilizer, more land, or more labor than soy. When it comes to land usage palm oil is actually the most efficient, but I won’t start on palm oil as an alternative. I don’t want to get into whose rainforests are more difficult to defend, Brazil’s or Indonesia’s. Basically, vegetable oils play a major role in the modern world and sadly some of them are cultivated on deforested land.
When it comes to creating sustainable food chains, consumer choice is a powerful market driver, but every last tree will be cut down before all food or product labels announce where the soy they contain came from. I’d like to say that if you live in the United States or the European Union there is a good chance that your soy products don’t have tree blood on their hands. The recent trade war, in which China raised tariffs on US soy, means that most of Brazil’s soy is now going to China while the EU gets most of their soy from their star-spangled cousin. Surprise good news — China’s soy imports actually went down for the first time in 15 years. Sorry, it’s not actually good news. The reason Chinese soy imports dropped is because they got smacked by the African swine flu and had to cull over a million pigs. Even if you aren’t eating Chinese meat, it doesn’t mean you are avoiding Brazilian soy. Unfortunately, soy is used in the production of an immense amount of industrial and consumer products and we all know how much China likes to export products. So there isn’t much hope of totally avoiding “bad” soy. If you commit your life to not buying anything with soy in it, you might, but for every one of you willing to spend the time and energy to do that there are about a million people who won’t.
The good news is, this isn’t the first time there has been large global attention focused on soy and Amazon deforestation. In 2006 Greenpeace first raised awareness of the problem and it resulted in a moratorium on soy which drastically reduced the number of trees being cut down. The solution back then wasn’t consumers putting items back on the shelf if soybean oil was listed as an ingredient. It was cooperation between a complex coalition of actors including the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, the National Association of Grain Exporters, the European Soy Consumer Group (led by McDonalds, I told you this stuff was complicated), the National Institute for Space Research, Banco do Brasil, the Brazillian Government, and a number of different civil society organizations, private companies, and NGOs. Together they used satellite imagery to monitor where deforestation was occurring, blacklisted farmers who were growing in those locations, and provided incentives to farmers who were growing soy responsibly. Wouldn’t you know it, it worked!
You’ll notice that the bar graph ominously ends in 2014. Yeah, things got worse again. Get ready for a long complicated list of reasons why. Evil wealthy earth-hating tree-murders wielded their sharp swords of corruption and got previous Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to give amnesty to farmers who broke the rules before 2008 and to weaken the “Forest Code” which covers how many trees landowners need to leave standing. Following this, there was a big spike in small subsistence farmers deforesting areas for their livelihood. Government crackdown methods used on big ag companies don’t work the same on poverty-ridden Pedros, nor are they as politically appealing. A large part of the recent increase in Brazilian deforestation is also due to the fact that the Cerrado, our previously mentioned tropical savannah, isn’t included in the soy moratorium. Then, of course, in 2019, Brazil elected a man sent by God to destroy the rainforest.
So how do you solve that problem? Global elections for states with rainforests? It’s not just Bolsonaro though, the Brazilian congress is dominated by the Beef, Bullets, and Bible caucus which holds over 60 percent of the seats. Corruption and greed lay at the heart of the world’s deforestation problems, but so does poverty and inequality. The inconvenient truth is that some people, with varying degrees of wealth and power, just don’t care about ecosystems or climate change.
For those of us that do, working on our food waste is probably the biggest issue. Nearly 8,000 square kilometers of the Amazon were deforested in 2018 for food production. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that every year 14,000,000 square kilometers(1.4 billion hectares) of agricultural land produces food that is never eaten. That’s about one-third of global food production that is wasted every year. Additionally, what we eat matters. Reducing the amount of beef in our diet, and to a lesser extent, meat and animal products in general (except mussels, they’re fine), is needed in order to reach some kind of sustainability.
If you are looking to address the Brazilian deforestation issue specifically, the truth is you may have already had your biggest impact by voting for current politicians who are climate-conscious or not. One of the biggest influences on state behavior is other states. The governments of Germany and Norway have both already suspended transfers to Brazil of over $30 million each. France and Ireland are threatening to block the gigantic Mercosur free trade agreement between the EU, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay if it doesn’t address environmental concerns. Although to be fair, Ireland also wants to block the trade deal to protect its own beef farmers from South American competition.
Some experts say, under the current political climate, the best way to diminish the damage is for commodity companies and NGOs to create market incentives to farm more sustainably. It’s doubtful that very many people are destroying habitats to cross it off their bucket list. They are simply trying to feed their families, increase their immense wealth, and every financial motive in between. If it becomes more profitable to farm on land that hasn’t been deforested, they will. So basically we just need to throw money at the problem until Brazil gets to have another election. Although, where exactly those of us feeling philanthropic should be throwing our money is complicated…
Notes: A majority of the information about the history of soy was gathered from the incredibly interesting paper written by Ines Prodöhl in the Journal of Global History titled “Versatile and cheap: a global history of soy in the first half of the twentieth century*”
