Americans have a weird relationship with soy, one of the most important and widely cultivated crops in the world.

Most of us associate the protein-packed, butter-yellow orbs known as soybeans with niche vegetarian products like tofu, soy milk, and veggie burgers (hence the anti-vegan epithet “soy boy”). In reality, though, pretty much everyone is eating soy all the time, and if you’re not a vegetarian, chances are you’re consuming more soy than those who avoid meat, not less.

That’s because soy is the invisible backbone supporting modern, meat-heavy diets. The overwhelming majority of soy on Earth — about 77 percent — is grown to feed not humans but the billions of chickens, pigs, and cows raised to feed us, supplying the chief protein source in livestock diets.

Humanity’s prodigious appetite for meat explains why the US produces so much soy. Although for most of agricultural history it was exclusively an East Asian crop, grown to make foods like miso, soy sauce, and tofu, today, almost all soybean cultivation is concentrated in the Americas. As recent trade war headlines reminded us, the US is, after Brazil, the world’s second leading soy producer, and soybeans are our top agricultural export. The humble bean has become, over the last century, as much an ambassador for American abundance as corn syrup and chicken nuggets.

Because it is demanded everywhere but production is geographically clustered, the soybean has attained curious geopolitical significance as the single most traded global agricultural commodity. China, long ago the world’s leading soybean grower, is now the world’s top importer, buying most of its soy from Brazil and the US, primarily to feed its factory-farmed pigs, chickens, and fish. In fact, in most years, China buys most of all US soy exports. Brazil, meanwhile, has, in recent decades, become an agricultural superpower partly on the back of its soy sales to China. Seeking to limit its dependence on imports, China is even striving to develop livestock feeds lower in soy content.

When delicate diplomatic relationships like these become strained — like, say, when the head of a major soy-producing country starts a trade war for no reason — export-dependent industries suffer. That’s the position that US soybean farmers now find themselves in. Beijing placed steep tariffs on American soybeans this year in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, vaporizing US soy sales to China. The total value of American soy exports from the first half of this year are down nearly a quarter from 2024, and, according to the most recent US Department of Agriculture data, Chinese traders have placed zero orders for US soy from the current harvest year, which started September 1. (By this time last year, they’d already ordered millions of tons.)

American soy producers, watching China buy

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