High Oleic Soybeans

High Oleic Soybeans 

This is a follow up to my post about GMO vs NonGMO 2016 cost of production and a little more details about what high oleic soybeans are. 

These soybeans have 2 traits - one is a "gene edit" where the pathway that converts oleic acid to linoleic acid is suppressed. There is no "trait" added, just a silencing of an enzymatic pathway that converts one type of oil to another. The other "trait" is the RoundUp resistance that comes from the bacteria Agrobacterium that codes for resistance to the herbicide glyphosate. 

These pics show the testing each truckload goes through before unloading. When the truck pulls into the grain elevator, the truck pulls onto a scale to be weighed full and a probe pulls several samples from the trailer to analyze. 

This grain elevator is dedicated 100% to high oleic soybeans. So while they test the beans for moisture like all grain elevators do to be sure they won't go moldy, they also run a test to be sure the soybeans have the correct oil content. Regular beans have a much lower oleic oil content, around 25%, HO beans average >75%.

What's special about oleic oil? It's a monounsaturated fat, in the same category as olive oil. The oil from these beans is transfat free and so has a lot of commercial use in food recipes to remove transfat. It replaces much of the partially hydrogenated soybean oil without significant recipe reformulation.

Because of their specialty oil profile, they have to be tested to be sure they are the correct beans and meet the threshold for oleic oil before the truck can unload. If it doesn't pass, we'd have to haul the beans down to another grain elevator that buys plain commodity soybeans and sell them at a lower price. We get paid a per bushel premium for keeping them pure to their HO variety and not cross contaminate them with any other bean. Essentially it means really good record keeping and really good housekeeping of our equipment. This is why we harvested HO first, to be sure we practiced good identity preservation (IP) apart from the other soybeans we grow.

Once the oil content is verified, we can drive over to the unloading dock and dump the beans into the elevator. (Last pic) Then we pull back on the scale and get an empty weight which will then print out a ticket how many bushels we delivered on that load.

What are the benefits of HO soybeans? These beans are transfat free and the oil extracted from them is more shelf stable and does not need hydrogenation. While you as a consumer cannot yet buy this oil at the grocery store, it is used in commercial food production in frying and in reformulating packaged foods to remove the transfats. 

"Why are your crops dead?"

I love it when I get to blog about real questions that real people ask me about farming. The other day, someone ask me why we wait until our crops are dead to harvest them. I had to think about what she meant before I could answer. I asked "What do you mean?" She replied "You know, how they all turn brown and die and then you harvest them."

I think she means corn that looks like this.

Or soybeans that look like this.



I understand the confusion. Most people who garden don't wait till their plants are dead to harvest the produce... but most people who garden do not grow grain. Grains or cereal crops are the "amber waves" of grain sung in "America the Beautiful". These crops may look "dead", but are actually "ripe" which is a better term than dead, and ready to be harvested.

Grain crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, sorghum and others are harvested when ripened and for those plants, ripening means they have dried down and their green tissue has turned brown. Since these crops have a long storage life, they must be low in moisture in order to be held in large grain bins without going moldy. They have to be dry in order to have any shelf life for future use in a food or feed product. Consumers don't want moldy grain in their food, nor do animals care for moldy grain in their feed, not to mention the health risk to both if moldy grain is consumed by either.

In our combine, we have a monitor that tells us how many bushels per acre we are harvesting, how many acres we have harvested, and what the moisture content is of the grain we are harvesting. If we harvest grains that are too high in moisture and deliver them to a grain elevator, we get "docked" or penalized for high moisture content. We try to harvest at the right moisture level but occasionally have to run grain through a grain dryer to lower the moisture before we sell it. Drying grain gets expensive so we do our best to harvest at the right moisture.

Right now, corn is running 14-18% moisture. We get docked if the moisture is over 15.5%.  We grow 104 - 112 day corn which means we can stagger our harvest dates over time so that the corn does not ripen all at the same time. This helps us plan the demand on our farm equipment and manage our resources more efficiently.

Today, we harvested corn which averaged 76 bushels/acre, less than half our normal average for dryland/unirrigated corn, due to the drought. This is the 2nd year of drought for us here in Maryland. Last year, 2011, we averaged barely 35 bushels/acre so despite not having a great year in 2012, we are thankful its not a repeat of the drought of 2011. Crop insurance is a critical component of the Farm Bill for years like this year and last. (and a future blog topic)

Soybeans must be under 13.5% moisture. Right now our soybeans look like this picture above.  Soybeans are grouped into 13 different maturity groups, based on their adaptation to the climate and latitude. We grow late Group 3 to some early Group 5 soybeans. These beans are just starting to turn yellow and approach what we call "leaf drop stage" when the leaves turn brown and drop off, sort of like the first soybean picture above. Because of the high humidity and risk of hurricanes in our region, we harvest corn first and soybeans last. Last year, besides the drought, Hurricane Isabel flattened our irrigated corn, so between the drought and the hurricane of 2011, it was one of our worst years on record. In a good year, we will be harvesting soybeans through the end of November or early December because of a large crop to bring in. If we finish by Thanksgiving, we've had a not-so-good year, meaning there wasn't much to harvest.

And so now you know why grain crops turn brown... in case you ever wondered.

The Many Faces of Soy

You’d think as a Dietitian, I would start this blog by writing about all the wonderful health benefits of soy, of which there are many…. But that’s not the focus of this blog. This blog is to describe to you the versatility of soy from a farmer’s perspective and what goes into getting soy from the field to the table.

On our farm, we grow 3 “types” of soy: seed-grade soy, feed-grade soy, and food-grade soy.

First, a few definitions:

Seed-grade soy: Seed-grade soybeans are grown by farmers to be planted the following growing season. Essentially, these are soybeans grown simply to be producers of seed and not converted into any type of animal or human product. They must meet purity standards for being true to their specific variety of soybeans.

Feed-grade soy: The primary use of these soybeans is as animal feed. Feed-grade soybeans make up the bulk of the soybean production in the USA. While they still must meet certain quality standards, they do not have to meet any purity standards regarding the type of variety of soybean. The nutritional analysis of this type of soybean is usually 36% protein which when fed to livestock meets part of their daily nutritional requirements for protein. Livestock diets must be well balanced for those animals to be healthy, productive and provide us with quality cuts of meat.

Food-grade soy: These soybeans are used in the production of soy foods such as tofu, soy-milk, sprouts and other soy-based foods. The nutritional analysis of food-grade soybeans is generally higher in protein than that of feed-grade soybeans. Food-grade soybeans range between 42-45% protein. A higher level of protein in the soybean helps make a better soy food product.

The development of each of these types of soybeans is market-driven, created by demand for the particular characteristics of soybean needed in each respective industry.

Both seed- and food-grade soybeans are grown for bonus pay or what we farmers call a premium. We get a higher price per bushel when we sell seed- or food-grade soybeans than what feed-grade soybeans are selling for at the local grain elevator. The reason for this is because these soybeans require something called “Identity Preservation” or IP. Using IP means that farmers ensure the purity of each variety of soybean. There is no blending of soybeans from other varieties and “contamination” between varieties will result in that batch being rejected. This means we clean out our planters, combines, trucks, grain carts, and grain bins to be sure that there is no “contaminating” soybeans left behind from the previous use of that equipment. If you do not like detailed housekeeping, then you would not like to be a grower of seed- or food-grade soybeans. Vacuuming a combine is not fun or easy.

Soybeans are vigorously tested to ensure that the identity is preserved or that they are in fact are the specific soybeans of a specific variety that was planted in a specific field. We keep detailed records about which varieties are planted where and which tanks they go into, always cleaning out the equipment before changing over to the next variety. We frequently grow 3-5 different varieties of soybeans, so the combine, trucks, and bins get cleaned multiple times throughout harvest season!

So why would a farmer grown one or another…? Well like the old saying “location, location, location”, farmer’s say “market, market, market”. Is there a local market for the crop, and if so, how does that crop fit into your farm’s business plan?

My farm’s plan is to add value to each acre we grow, so we look for opportunities to grow crops at premium prices. Because we live in the Mid-Atlantic region, we are 1 ½ hours from Washington DC, Baltimore, or Philadelphia, and 3 hours from New York City. Because of our diverse urban neighbors, we have a strong outlet for food-grade soybeans through predominantly Asian soy-food processors. Our “tofu beans” go through stringent quality testing be sure they have sufficient protein, that their identify is “preserved” and meet those required purity standards, that the soybeans are uniform in color and size, and that they are at the correct moisture level so that they don’t mold while sitting in bags waiting to be processed into soy-foods. Through a local farmer’s cooperative, we haul pallets of 60 pound bags of tofu beans to these cities where our buyers who are small mom and pop tofu and soy food makers turn them into food items on the grocery store shelves.

As a farmer, I wanted to share this story with you so you can gain an appreciation for the fact that there are many different types of soybeans, they are not all created equal. As a consumer I think you should know the extent to which we farmers go to ensure the identity and the quality of soybeans used in our food supply.