Are there soybeans in our car?

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More than 80 percent of soybeans are grown in the Midwest. In the United States, the top soybean producing states are Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota.

About 70% of soybeans grown in the United States are processed and used for livestock feed. Other common uses are food products like vegetable oil, soy milk, and tofu; and soy biodiesel.

Yes! There are hundreds of different types of soybeans - called varieties - that farmers will choose to plant in different fields for different reasons. Some of these might be the length of the growing season, the type of soil in a field, or resistance to drought or pests.

Humans definitely eat soybeans that have been processed into food products like vegetable oil, soy milk, and tofu. A certain variety of soybeans can also be planted and eaten when it is ripe. This type is called edamame, and is commonly eaten in Japanese foods.

Probably! Many Asian cultures use lots of soybeans in their dishes in the form of tofu, soy sauce, or edamame. Additionally, most vegetable oils used in frying or baking contain soybeans.

In 2023, Illinois farmers raised 648.9 million bushels of soybeans on 10.3 million acres. 1 bushel of soybeans weighs 60 pounds... that's nearly 39 billion pounds of soybeans!

You can find soybeans in your everyday life in the form of vegetable oil, soy milk, soy sauce, or tofu. If you ride the bus to school, many school buses are powered by soy biodiesel!

Soybeans are a legume, which is a type of plant that "fixes" Nitrogen into the soil. This means that as soybeans grow, they are putting Nitrogen back into the soil for the next crop. Corn is a crop that requires a lot of Nitrogen to grow, so most farmers will follow a crop rotation of corn one year and soybeans the next.

Soybeans are harvested with a large machine called a combine. They are left in the field until the plant has died and turned brown and the leaves have fallen off. The combine drives through the field and cuts the soybean stalk at the base. The plant enters inside the combine on a conveyor belt system, which shakes the beans off the plant. The beans are kept, and the rest of the plant is sent out the back of the combine back into the field.

Once the combine has harvested the soybeans off the plant, they are taken by semitruck to the local grain elevator. They are stored there until they are purchased by a local or overseas market to be processed into soybean products.

If your family drives a Ford vehicle, it very likely does! Today, every new Ford vehicle contains 31,251 soybeans in the foam inside the seats as well as other plastic around the car. Other car manufacturers like Toyota, Mazda, and Mercedes-Benz are also using bioplastics in the cars they are building.

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