Soy-Based Pavement Technology Replaces, Renews 24 Miles Of Rural Iowa Roadways

Feb 05, 2026

A train of heavy equipment slowly worked its way across 8.6 miles of a northeast Iowa county road last summer.

The corn growing along C14 just south of West Union was dark green and high. Farmhouses and outbuildings were on the horizon. The ditches along the roadway were freshly mowed. It was a good day to fix a rural road built in the 1960s, patched up and covered over ever since, now deteriorated and even crumbling beneath the surface.

The fix was soy pavement technology developed by Iowa State University engineers.

The repairs to C14 were part of a full-scale, 24-mile demonstration of “soy roads” in rural areas of Fayette and Clayton counties and the town of Volga. Four different road projects used soybean-based paving products developed by Iowa State engineers Eric Cochran, the Mary Jane Skogen Hagenson and Randy L. Hagenson Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering, Christopher Williams, the Gerald and Audrey Olson Professor in Civil Engineering, and their research groups. The technology is now produced by their startup company, SoyLei Innovative Products.

A full-scale project, indeed:

Leading the paving train along C14 was a tanker truck carrying refills of asphalt pavement emulsion, including soy-based binders, for rehabilitating and bonding recycled pavement material. Next was a semi pulling a tank full of water to cool the sharp bits of the next machine.

Source : iastate.edu

Video: EP 73 Diversity is Resiliency – Stories of Regeneration Part 6

During the growing season of 2023 as summer turned into fall, the Rural Routes to Climate Solutions podcast and Regeneration Canada were on the final leg of the Stories of Regeneration tour. After covering most of the Prairies and most of central and eastern Canada in the summer, our months-long journey came to an end in Canada’s two most western provinces around harvest time.

This next phase of our journey brought us to Cawston, British Columbia, acclaimed as the Organic Farming Capital of Canada. At Snowy Mountain Farms, managed by Aaron Goddard and his family, you will find a 12-acre farm that boasts over 70 varieties of fruits such as cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, pears, apples, and quince. Aaron employs regenerative agriculture practices to cultivate and sustain living soils, which are essential for producing fruit that is not only delicious but also rich in nutrients.