Giving Voice to Family Farms

Biofuel and food and ecosystem demands need to be managed for shared success across the food system. Help us protect farmers, livestock and ecosystems.

Independent university and commercial agriculture scientists discovered a way to see which soybean varieties deliver more soybean oil per bushel than others. This field-level fact matters to food sustainability leaders because soybean oil and protein are inversely correlated. However, a sound biofuel policy addressing that fact can improve food and energy sustainability instead of undermining it.

Selecting soybeans based on oil value can significantly increase the efficiency of biodiesel production, but there are barriers standing in the way that grassroots ProActivism can help remove.

Challenges

Key barriers to producing soybeans with more oil per bushel:

  1. Farmers naturally select soybean varieties for yields. Most are unaware that varieties can be selected for higher oil.
  2. Seed companies and most of the soybean industry do not focus on improved soybean protein with few exceptions, including Benson Hill, AgReliant, and Syngenta. Others have disregarded decades of nutritionists’ warnings that soybean protein is declining, because they don’t get paid directly for nutrition quality.
  3. Processors do not pay directly for higher oil levels.
  4. Soybean protein and oil often work against each other in soybean varieties, so when one goes up the other goes down. Some varieties are good at delivering both.
  5. There is a single processing system for soybean protein and oil, which means optimal results are not achievable with the current approach to processing soybeans.

ProActivism Solutions

Here’s how supporting ProActivism helps improve family farm revenue and advance sustainability:

  1. INDEPENDENT SCIENCE — Ongoing data collection and analysis are needed to determine which new soybean varieties deliver the best feed value to oil customers.
  2. Farmer and customer education programs with independent funding are essential. Farmers cannot get paid for value they don’t know about. This means funding is needed for:
    1. Advertising campaigns in farm and consumer magazines
    2. Industry relations programs that bring people together around farming and fuel
  3. Value-sharing negotiations are necessary on behalf of farmers, to ensure people who deliver better oil value get paid their fair share of the sale.

Science Support

The article Characterizing Soybean Meal Value Variation across the United States: A Swine Case Study, describes the original research by the independent FieldRise and Blue Spring teams that found the feed value variations hiding in soybean varieties.

It’s even easier to measure oil value at the variety level and an independent science team has requested the necessary data from the soybean checkoff.

Learn more about ethanol

Learn more about soy biodiesel

How you can help

Support Proactivism Financially  – We’re seeking nonprofit status to help insure farmers and the public benefit from the discovers that were made.

Sign up to join the movement – We will send updates for you to post on social media or share in your corporate communications, to help support farmers and the families they feed.