Illinois Grows Millions of Bushels of Soybeans. Why Aren’t We Eating Them?

By Tara Sun

Inside a factory on Chicago’s North Side, the smell of simmering soybeans drifts through the air. On a typical day, “I use about 4,000 pounds of dry beans,” Jenny Yang said. She and her team grind, cook and press thousands of pounds of soybeans into silky tofu and rich soy milk — the taste of home for Yang and for many who grew up with tofu on the table.

“She still makes it the same way — no preservatives, made mostly by hand,” said Bob Lum, a longtime friend of Yang who helps with the business. Her company, Phoenix Bean, has been making tofu and soy milk this way since she bought it in 2006. It is one of the few businesses in the state that uses Illinois food-grade, non-GMO, or non-genetically modified organism, soybeans, sourced directly from local farms like Janie’s Mill in Ashkum.

“I know them since back in the day, like at least 10, 15 years,” Yang said. “This is a good, very good partnership.”

Illinois grows more soybeans than any other state, harvesting more than 639 million bushels in 2025, well ahead of Iowa’s 595 million bushels and Minnesota’s 371 million bushels. Lawmakers designated the soybean as the official State Bean in 2025, effective Jan. 1, 2026, with Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, calling Decatur the “soybean capital of the world.”

But almost none of those millions of bushels end up as food on Illinois plates. According to the Illinois Soybean Association, 60% of soybeans grown in the state are exported; most of the remaining 40% are processed as animal feed, leaving the state reliant on imports for its soy food.