Culinary soys: better money, more work

You’ve only got to look at supermarket shelves to see why Australia’s soybean industry wants more varieties with qualities that suit the food trade ­– end products like soy milk, tofu, natto and miso.

The Australian market for soybeans for human consumption is expanding and paying better prices than the traditional crushing market – producing oil and meal for stockfeed.

But other reasons for the new focus on culinary soybeans lie overseas:

• increasing demand for  “identity preserved” (IP) beans for human consumption, and

• opportunities for Australia to supply Asia with high value, GM free, fresh soybeans when they are not available in the Northern Hemisphere.

Peter Brodie, principal of Toowoomba grain and seed merchant Philp Brodie Grains, says there is a considerable premium for top quality, human consumption soybeans, but it’s a premium that growers have to earn.

“Quality is everything in the market for human consumption soybeans, and that is doubly the case in Japan, where buyers now require identity preservation records from time of planting to shipment,” Mr Brodie says.

“Four years ago we formed the Northern Australian Soybean Industry Association (NASIA) to coordinate the campaign for soybean quality and, as part of that, we have developed a Declaration Form that growers can use to tell soybean buyers what they want to know.

“New growers might be surprised at the level of detail required in the form, but it makes possible the identity preservation increasingly demanded by the market.

“It shows what herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and desiccants have been used in producing the soybean crop as well as details of fertiliser and irrigation inputs and harvest equipment and hygiene practices.”

Mr Brodie said agronomic best practice for the production of human consumption soybeans included choice of the right variety – with A6785, P791 and Dragon the most popular – and a commitment to delivering beans with more than 40 per cent protein.

Good rotations helped achieve high protein but at least one Darling Downs farmer had boosted it last season with an application of nitrogen at crop flowering time.

Culinary quality varieties are a major aim of the National Soybean Improvement Program that is supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the Australian Government.