Go tell your edamame the bad news: Soybeans — often touted as an environmentally sustainable protein alternative to meat — are now being called bad for nature.
What's the beef, so to speak? Soy's critics (and there are many) say the bean offends on two eco-fronts:
First, that soy farming is a growing factor in Amazon deforestation.
Second, that genetically modified soybeans — the vast majority of soy grown in the United States — have led to more pesticide and fungicide use by U.S. farmers...not less as promised by their manufacturers.
So is "tofu" just a synonym for "ecocide"? We at the Conservancy's Enviro-Tips put on our fedoras and gumshoes and set out to investigate. And found out (among other things) that those gumshoes probably are partially made from soy.
Soybean oil is also the predominant component of biodiesel in the United States, this country's leading biofuel.
But food products — for both humans and the animals they eat — still make up the lion's share of soy production:
For instance, soybean oil makes up around two-thirds of all oils and fats consumed in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
And most soybean meal — around 85 percent — goes to make feed for animals.
In fact, worldwide soy production has quintupled since 1950 to meet all this growing demand. The United States used to be king of bean production, but producers have recently turned to growing soybeans in countries such as China,India and Brazil, where enforcement of environmental and labor regulations are often lax and infrastructure is cheaper to build.
Researchers from a collective of Brazilian non-governmental organizations recently found that 70 percent of deforested areas in a region of Brazil's Mato Grasso state were being used for soy and rice production — not cattle ranching, the traditional culprit fingered in Amazonian deforestation. (Cattle pasture still accounts for 85 percent of that deforestation, according to New Scientist magazine.)
Andre Lima, a researcher from the Brazilian NGO Social-Environment Institute, says that "there exists a direct relationship between recent [Brazilian] deforestation and agricultural expansion, principally for soybeans."
With Brazil expected to eventually become the world's leading soybean-producing nation, that trend could spell even more deforestation of the Amazon.
Superbean versus Superweeds
The other eco-worry about soybeans is that almost all of them — 87 percent grown in the United States, and more than 50 percent grown worldwide — have been genetically modified to resist pests as well as herbicides that might otherwise have killed the plants.
But U.S.-based studies have reported that the genetically modified soybeans have actually seen increased use of pesticides and herbicides — inadvertently producing weeds that are resistant to the herbicides. Indeed, more pesticides are used on soybeans than on any other U.S. crop except for corn.
Buy Local, Read Labels and Support The Nature Conservancy
The Conservancy's Responsible Soy Project creates economic incentives for Brazilian soy farmers to work in agreement with the country's environmental legislation.
The Conservancy is providing farmers technical assistance to help them comply with Brazilian environmental legislation, which is actually quite good yet rarely enforced.
The Conservancy’s goal in this work is to slow rainforest conversion caused by large-scale farming. In fact, we've made mitigating the impact of large-scale agricultural expansion — from the Atlantic Forest to the Cerrado — a central strategy for conserving the principal ecosystems of Brazil.
Another option is to buy organic tofu products, although they're not that easy to find. Organic soy still makes up less than one percent of all soybeans farmed in the United States, according to the USDA — and total acreage has actually been falling in recent years.
And some soy products sold as "organic" really aren’t, according to the Organic Consumers Association. The key is to know your labeling:
Only products labeled as "100-percent organic" contain only organically produced ingredients.
"Organic" products contain at least 95 percent organic ingredients.
And "made with organic ingredients" products actually have to be only 70 percent organic.
Purveyors of 100-percent organic tofu products include Turtle Island, which makes Tofurky (that staple of vegetarian Thanksgivings); Vitasoy; and Diamond Organics of Moss Landing, California ships organic tofu steaks, gyros, kabobs and other fake meats coast to coast. Or you could completely off-grid and make your own organic tofu with the SoyQuick homemade soymilk and tofu maker!
The bottom line: While environmentally unfriendly soy is seemingly everywhere and in everything, you can minimize your impact to some extent through informed choices.
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