U.S. Soybean Production Supports Carbon-Neutral Goals

May 17, 2023

By Laura Temple

In response to consumer demand, companies of all sizes and across all industries, from local shops to global manufacturers, actively set goals to reduce their carbon footprints. As these companies seek to be part of climate solutions, they find ways to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, from direct activities to supply chains.

And soybean production can be part of those efforts, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to furthering soil health and increasing carbon-storing capacity of fields. At times, practices used in raising soybeans offers solutions to forge ahead on all three.

To offset some of carbon-dioxide-generating activities, many of these companies choose to invest in carbon credits.¹ As the carbon market develops, U.S. Soy farmers can offer those credits for some of the practices they incorporate into their farms that allows those soils to store even more organic carbon.

“As global corporations commit to carbon neutrality, soybean farmers are positioned to help,” says Jack Cornell, director of sustainable supply for the United Soybean Board. “U.S. Soy has the lowest carbon footprint compared to soy of other origins, but that isn’t all the industry offers.

“Nature-based solutions to sequestering carbon, like using plants, appeal to many of those companies,” he continues. “Because of this, demand for carbon credits derived from agriculture tends to be higher than the global average.²”

Cornell explains that soils serve as a primary organic carbon pool. Research has shown that agricultural practices that minimize soil disturbance and increase organic matter content in soils can increase soil organic carbon.³ This additional carbon storage can offset carbon dioxide release from other activities.

“Carbon markets typically include some form of scientific verification that additional carbon is being stored, offsetting other activities,” he adds.

Carbon-Storing Agricultural Practices

“In many regions of the U.S., soybeans respond well to those management practices,” Cornell continues. “At the same time, these sustainable practices help U.S. Soy farmers protect and improve soil health, which can translate to reliable crop yields.”

Such practices include conservation tillage or no-till, which minimizes or eliminates disturbance of the soil surface as the crop is planted and nurtured. Less-disturbed soils retain, or sequester, more carbon. They also better support below-ground organisms like earthworms, which impact soil characteristics like increasing nutrient availability to plants and providing better drainage, helping crop production. U.S. Soy farmers have adopted these practices on roughly two-thirds of the acres that often include soybeans in the crop rotation.⁴

Soils experiencing less surface disturbance tend to better retain and break down crop residue from previous crops, another way to increase organic matter content — and by extension soil carbon.³

Diverse crop rotations also support increases in organic carbon.³ Soybeans thrive in a variety of crop rotations, from the soybean-corn system used in much of the U.S. Midwest to more complex rotations that include small grains like wheat or rice, cotton, vegetable crops and more.

Planting cover crops also fits well into soybean production and increases soil organic matter. Typically planted around harvest, cover crops like species of rye, wheat, clover or forage radish sprout and grow in the fall as long as weather conditions allow. Depending on the climate and temperatures, the plants go dormant during the winter. Some cover crops naturally die over the winter. Others grow again in the spring until they are terminated to make way for the next primary crop. Cover crops cover the ground and produce roots that limit soil erosion, while allowing soils to maintain actively growing plants for longer periods of time to hold more carbon. Currently, about 6% of U.S. farmland uses cover crops,⁵ but adoption is growing rapidly.

“Cover crops provide many long-term soil health benefits,” Cornell says. “Demand for carbon credits is just another of the many factors encouraging adoption of cover crops.”

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”