China imported no soybeans from the U.S. in September, the first time since November 2018 that shipments fell to zero, while South American shipments surged from a year earlier, as buyers shunned American cargoes during the ongoing trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
It’s a monocrop. Vast swaths of the Amazon Rainforest are destroyed for its cultivation. It’s one of 14 allergens that are mandated to be listed in the EU, but is otherwise ubiquitous in processed products often without labelling. It’s also prone to cause intolerance of it in humans, causing gastrointestinal bloating and diarrhoea. It fixes nitrogen, but depletes other minerals regardless and requires a lot of water.
As always, it’d be fine if crops were rotated or better yet mixed a lot more and if governments wouldn’t subsidize it. Soy has very diverse uses. However many fruit plantations and local crops have been reduced to nothing to grow this cash crop for big ag in Central and Eastern Europe.
The foresight we lack now will bite us in the face in a decade or two.
Shout out to certain Indigineous communities, particularly the Wampis Nation, for expelling the Incas and Western colonial and corporate interests to preserve the rainforest.
https://youtu.be/tm6VSkm_ko8
Well I don’t think any of those places are in the US, so I don’t think they’re a concern here.