Three major problems solved through soybeans

March 3, 2025 | Joseph Hopper

Soy’s rise to prominence as an ingredient in commercial products can be dizzying to discuss. From tires to sneakers, pavement, candles, adhesives, plastics, there are new and exciting products made with soy being announced each year. Each new use or product represents positive growth for soybean demand. What can be hard to guess, is the impact any one new use or product may have on the soybean industry. Some of the most successful soy-based products had to endure years of skepticism and doubt — before reaching their potential  
as a solution to a major problem.

Problem: The 1980s soybean oil surplus

Iowa farmers faced down many challenges in the 1980s, but also one unique to growing soybeans. With meat consumption growing worldwide, soybean meal had surpassed soybean oil as the most valuable soy byproduct. It led to a surplus of soy oil, which farmers suspected was becoming a drag to soybean prices.

“We were trying to find a market for our surplus oil because the world needed the protein from the meal and didn’t need the oil as much because no one had developed new uses for it,” says Ron Heck, past president of the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) and the American Soybean Association (ASA).

The solution to the oil surplus was the development and promotion of soy diesel, which eventually coalesced into biodiesel as we know it today. The development of biodiesel as a product spans many decades. Soy oil was first used to create “artificial petroleum” in Japan in 1921, but it took nearly seven more decades before the words “soy diesel” or “biodiesel” would first appear in print.

“The reason we invest in new uses as soybean farmers is because we want to create markets to sell our products,” says Heck. “If we didn’t make those investments, these products wouldn’t happen because no commercial company has the incentive to try these different new uses. We didn’t think biodiesel was going to be this big. Concerns about crude oil supply, cleaner air and carbon reductions have made renewable fuels more interesting, and we eventually had a hit on our hands.”

One year after the turn of the millennium, U.S. biodiesel production stood at 8.58 million gallons. In 2023, the total number of biodiesel gallons produced in the U.S. was nearly 1.7 billion gallons.

Problem: Petroleum prices affect newspapers’ bottom line

With the price of oil rising in the late ’70s and into the ’80s, America’s newspaper industry was feeling the pressure when buying traditional petroleum-based newspaper ink. Not only were prices volatile and trending upward, there was sometimes no guarantee ink would be available as refineries were focused on meeting the needs for gasoline. The American Newspaper Publishers Association sought an alternative and by 1987, the Cedar Rapids Gazette printed the first newspaper with soy ink. In the same year soy ink was first used on the pages of The Gazette, then Iowa Soybean Promotion Board Chair Don Latham made the rounds on the news explaining its benefits. Key among them: resistance to ink rub-off, more vivid colors and a host of environmental benefits, such as being less vaporous.

“It’s a completely biodegradable product,” Latham told KIMT-TV News of Mason City in September of 1987.  
“So even though it might be a little more expensive initially, the overall cost of the soybean oil-based program is much less to the printer.”

Two years after first being used to print the news in Cedar Rapids, soy ink was being used in 1,000 newspapers. ISA established the National Soy Ink Information Center in 1993 and by 2000 soy ink was responsible for utilizing the oil from more than 9 million bushels of soybeans. By 2005, soy ink was ubiquitous in printing. The non-petroleum ink printers had hoped for in the ’70s was now widely available.

Finally, a good problem

In the late ’90s, it began to form: the U.S. biobased economy. Former President Bill Clinton signed an executive order in 1999 to help accelerate the development of “21st century biobased industries” but the biobased economy officially arrived with the passage of the 2002 Farm Bill.

“The USDA BioPreferred Program was established in the 2002 Farm Bill with the goal of increasing the purchase and use of biobased products,” says Matt Herman, ISA chief officer of demand and advocacy. “The hope was this program would not only boost demand for agricultural commodities but also lead to increased rural manufacturing and job creation.”

The program was significantly expanded in the 2008 Farm Bill with the intention biobased products proven successful in the government market could also find success in the consumer market.

“It authorized USDA to create the Biobased Product label, which launched around 2011,” says Herman. “This label is likely what most people recognize today. It established a federal government procurement preference for biobased products. These changes were instrumental in elevating the program's visibility and impact.”

The ISA chief officer of demand says there is growing interest among farm groups and the bioproducts industry to increase funding for the BioPreferred Program. With hundreds of mature soy-based products already developed, the newest problem farmers may solve is figuring out which product to make from soybeans next.

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