Your Soybeans
Don’t Just Disappear.
Every bushel you deliver to a processing facility starts a journey that feeds livestock, fuels engines, and powers American kitchens. Here’s exactly where they go.
What Happens After Drop-Off
You Deliver the Crop
Your soybeans arrive at one of 72 NOPA member plants across 20 states. From there, a solvent extraction process separates every usable component — nothing is wasted, and demand for your crop has never been stronger.
Your farm, your supplyCrushing & Extraction
Soybeans are cleaned, cracked, dehulled, and flaked. A solvent extracts the oil from the flakes. The remaining high-protein flakes become soybean meal. U.S. crush capacity has expanded significantly as domestic demand has grown — driven in large part by biofuels policy.
Zero waste processTwo Products Emerge
Every bushel splits into two streams: 80% becomes soybean meal — the protein backbone of U.S. livestock feed — and 20% becomes soybean oil, now split evenly between food and biofuels. That biofuels share has grown substantially over the past two decades.
Meal & oilDomestic Use & Export
Today, 60% of U.S. soybeans are crushed here at home — more than are exported as whole beans. That wasn’t always the case. Biofuels policy has fundamentally shifted the balance, keeping more value from your crop inside the U.S. economy.
Local & global marketsWe Used to Export More Than We Crushed. Biofuels Changed That.
For most of the 20th century, the U.S. shipped the majority of its soybean crop overseas as whole beans — sending foreign processors the jobs, the co-products, and the value-added margin that should have stayed on this side of the border. Domestic biofuels policy changed the economics. By creating a reliable, policy-backed market for soybean oil as a fuel feedstock, the Renewable Fuel Standard and related programs drove investment in U.S. crush capacity — new facilities, expanded plants, more demand for the beans you grow. Today, domestic crush outpaces whole-bean exports. That means more of the value your crop generates stays in American communities, American supply chains, and American paychecks.
Two Products. Countless Uses.
Soybean Meal
The protein powerhouse of American agriculture. Your soybean meal goes directly into the feed that raises the meat on American dinner tables — and reaches export markets that depend on U.S. quality.
Soybean Oil
Half goes to American food production — cooking oils, salad dressings, and other staple food uses. The other half fuels the domestic biofuels industry, reducing reliance on petroleum and creating demand that comes right back to your bottom line.
Your Crop Competes Worldwide
40% of U.S. soybeans are exported as whole beans — and your meal reaches markets beyond our borders too.
Of the whole soybeans exported, China takes half the volume. The other half reaches markets across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Europe. NOPA members and their partners work to keep those markets open and accessible for American farmers — which means fighting for fair trade rules every day in Washington.
The soybean meal your crop produces also competes globally, with key markets including Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, and Colombia — markets NOPA actively defends through trade and policy advocacy.