Soybean oil is the most common oil used to produce biodiesel. Soybeans are also an important ingredient in many food products and in animal feed and we wanted to learn more about the sustainability of growing soybeans and producing biodiesel.

Sustainability is a Priority
Cindy Pulskamp is a farmer in North Dakota and also serves on the United Soybean Board and as a director for The Center for Food Integrity. She said sustainability is a priority for farmers and what that means varies from farm to farm.

“When you talk about sustainability, longevity is a big part of it. This year, the farm that I am part of will be 110 years old,” she said. “Sustainability is also always moving and changing. As soon as you learn something that makes you better, you’ve now raised the bar to make yourself better than you were. The sustainability that I look for in our soybeans and our farming operation is to always challenge ourselves to find new and better ways to produce a better product.”

Biodiesel helps improve sustainability by using every part of the bean, said Mac Marshall, vice president of market intelligence for the United Soybean Board.

“When you crush beans, you get about 80% meal and about 20% oil. The meal fraction is where the protein resides and most of that is used to feed livestock,” he said.

When it comes to the oil, some is used in foods such as cooking oil and salad dressing. About 30 years ago, farmers began funding research to find more ways to use soybean oil and developed biodiesel, Marshall said. Biodiesel is often used in vehicles such as trucks and buses.

Biodiesel and Food Prices
There has been some question if using soybeans for fuel has caused food prices to rise. A study conducted by Purdue University found that biofuels had little impact on food prices because only a small portion of soybeans are used for fuel. When soybeans are processed to create oil to meet biofuel demand, it means more meal is available for animal feed, driving down the price of animal protein products, the study determined.

“The economic model we created links the farm supply of soybeans to retail demand for various food products. What we found, after assessing the impact of rising soybean oil demand on prices at the grocery store, was little change to the Consumer Price Index (CPI),” said Jayson Lusk, the author of the study who was a food and agricultural economist at Purdue University at the time of the study. “While the increased demand for biofuels pushed up retail prices for oil between 0.16% and 4.41% across different categories, retail animal product prices for dairy, beef, pork, chicken and eggs declined between -0.01% and -0.16%.”

Biodiesel and Carbon Footprint
Biofuels are sustainable in other ways, Marshall said.

“Renewable diesel is effectively a one-to-one replacement for petroleum-based diesel fuel. Instead of having to utilize a gallon of petroleum diesel fuel, which is produced by extracting it from the earth, we are producing the same gallon of fuel that has the same utility without the extractive release of carbon into the atmosphere,” he said.

A full lifecycle analysis found that biodiesel produced from oilseed crops reduces greenhouse gas emissions up to 69% compared to petroleum diesel.

Pulskamp said biodiesel can help cut emissions in situations where electric vehicles are not feasible, such as large trucks or farm equipment that require more horsepower or areas that do not have the infrastructure for electric vehicles.

“Biofuels can bridge the chasm because biofuels take extensive amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and you’re not losing horsepower,” she said. “Once petroleum is taken from the ground, it is gone. But soybeans are harvested and the next year we grow that crop again and produce more food and fuel. That’s one of the wonderful things about soybeans.”

When considering sustainability issues, farmers are a key part of the solution, Marshall said.

“First and foremost, we think about global nutrition and the need to continue to produce food for a growing population,” he said. “In the United States, we don’t have the luxury of bringing more land into production, nor would that be the best stewardship of a finite resource. So our farmers really have to focus on efficiency to utilize the most of what they have on each acre of land to grow the most.”

There are many tools available to help farmers be more sustainable, Pulskamp said, such as using genetics to breed plants that are healthier and learning how to best manage nutrients in the soil. “Deep in my heart, the best thing I can do is at the end of the day is knowing that I gave it my best to produce a really good product. I have talked to many, many of my fellow soy farmers and they believe the same thing.”

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Soy comes from soybeans – a crop grown by farmers throughout the United States – in states such as Ohio, Illinois and Minnesota as well as Canada. We like to dig into the information behind how our food is grown and many of us want to know if our food is sustainably grown, so we found these interesting facts about soy and soybeans.

1. Soybeans create some of their own fertilizer.

Soybeans are in a class of plants called legumes which have the unique ability to use nitrogen that is in the air. Microorganisms that live on the soybean roots convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plant can use. In turn, the plant feeds the microorganism. When the plant decays, the nitrogen that has been pulled from the air is released into the soil. Growing soybeans in a field can add 30 to 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre into the soil.

2. Every part of the soybean is used in some way.

After farmers harvest the beans from the field, they are processed, where the bean is separated into two parts. Most of the bean is meal, which contains protein, and is used in food products or feed for animals, such as chickens, pigs and cows.

The other portion of the bean is oil, some of which is used as cooking oil, which is commonly labeled vegetable oil. It is also used in many different products –machine oil, paint, candles, beauty supplies and even crayons.

3. Soybeans are renewable fuel.

Soybeans are used to make a renewable fuel known as biodiesel. Compared to petroleum-based diesel, biodiesel produces fewer air pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and hydrocarbons.

Biodiesel is considered to be carbon-neutral because soybean plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, which offsets the carbon that forms while making and burning biodiesel.

Any diesel vehicle can use biodiesel, or a blend of biodiesel and petroleum diesel. More than 9 billion gallons of biodiesel are used worldwide each year.

4. Soybeans can replace petroleum in common products.

The oil from soybeans is chemically similar to petroleum and many manufacturers are using soy oil in their products because it is a more sustainable option. Soybean oil is used in tires, creating a tire that is more flexible in cold weather. Soybeans are used in flooring products to create Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings that meet environmental targets. It’s also used to make environmentally safe cleaning products.

5. Soybean farmers are growing more using less natural resources.

Scientists and farmers have worked together to make raising soybeans sustainable for the environment. They have adopted practices to be more efficient, so food can be grown using less land, energy and water. From 1980 to 2015, farmers cut their energy use by 35 percent and invested in soil conservation to preserve land. By using technology, such as GPS and seeds that require less pesticides, farmers reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent during that same period.

Soybeans are a versatile crop that helps create environmentally friendly products. Growers continue to look for ways to make the crop even more sustainable.

Sources:

U.S. Department of Energy

Ohio Soy Council

University of Missouri

United Soybean Board

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