Organic Soy Beans

Soybeans live in harmony with special soil bacteria that convert nitrogen from the atmosphere to a form in the soil that the soybean plant uses.

Before planting soybeans we coat the seed with innoculant, containing bacteria that cause the nitrogen fixation. The bacteria live in nodules in the root system of the soybean. After the soybeans are harvested the remaining plant is turned back into the soil. This builds organic matter in the soil and also enhances the nitrogen content of the soil.

Sugar Cane planted after a soybean crop benefits from the green manure and nitrogen. The sugar cane grows very well. The soybean rotation crop also helps break up the disease cycle of mono-culture cropping.

As well as all the benefits that the soybean crop provides to the soil, organic soybeans are a valuable crop. The costs and efforts of planting and harvesting are repaid twice with the commercial return and improvement to the soil.

Much of this information below comes from a book titled How to grow Super Soybeans by Dr. Harold T Willis


The soybean is a truly amazing and versatile crop plant.

It is one of the oldest food plants, domesticated by 1100BC in northeastern China. Its ancestor is a wild vine-like plant which produces tiny, hard seeds that are useless for feed unless properly prepared.
Over the next several hundred years the domesticated soybean spread throughout much of eastern Asia. It grew upright and yielded larger, more digestible seeds. A variety of foods was developed from the soybean, ranging from soybean sprouts to steamed raw beans to roasted seeds to soy milk to soy sauce to fermented soybean paste and cake to soy flour to the commonly eaten curd called tofu (or dofu)
Soybeans reached the western world by the early 1700s and were first grown in North America by 1804. The primary use for the crop was for forage, hay and green manure.
In the 1880s, French scientists discovered that the soybean contains practically no starch, so its use in diabetic diets began. Later its high protein content was recognized.

Modern Uses.
In the early 1900s the first processing of seeds for oil and meal was done in England. For the most part, soybeans were a neglected crop until WWII. Germany developed a soy oil lard substitute and a meat substitute. In the U.S. increasing amounts of soybean meal were used as livestock and poultry fees, especially after 1945 when the consumption of meat increased dramatically. More recently, an increasing proportion of American soybean production has been used by the food processing industry in such foods as mayonnaise, shortening, ice cream and salad dressings. Industry uses lesser amounts, in products including paint, ink, putty, caulking, wallpaper, rubber substitutes, adhesives, fire extinguisher foam, electrical insulation and gasoline. The versatile soybean is a part of everyone’s life in developed countries.