Life in the fields has made Wang Qiuling look older than her age. Her face has been wrinkled from long days spent in the sun inspecting soybeans as an agricultural expert.

Wang, who works for the Heze Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Heze, Shandong Province, has been breeding better varieties of soybeans for the past three decades.

In the early 1990s, when most of her predecessors either retired or left the academy, Wang took over the soybean breeding program. Her first research project was to develop a variety of soybean capable of yielding 4,500 kg per hectare, and with a protein content of over 46 percent.

After years of hard work and research, she developed a variety she named Hedou 12. Since 2008, the variety has been used as a standard for soybean breeding in Shandong, meaning all new varieties are compared with it to measure success.

Wang has continued to develop high-output and disease-resistant soybean varieties adaptable to different environments, and has promoted them nationwide to benefit farmers.

Between 2016 and 2020, the land devoted to growing the Hedou soybean varieties increased to over 773,000 hectares, generating an economic benefit of 1.27 billion yuan ($200 million).

Given the arable land constraint, Wang's research is vital for increasing soybean output in China.

Wang is a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) and at the recently concluded Fifth Session of the 13th NPC, proposed increasing soybean subsidies to motivate more farmers to grow them.

Reliance on imports 

Improved living standards and a thriving livestock industry have seen soybean demand increase in recent decades; China has largely relied on imported varieties since the 1990s.

According to consulting firm Shanghai JC Intelligence Co. Ltd., China consumed 115.9 million tons of soybeans in 2020, 99.5 million tons of which were imported, accounting for around 86 percent of total consumption in China and 60 percent of the global trade volume.

In addition to heavy reliance on imports, sources of imports are limited to a few countries. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainties in international geopolitics, China faces greater risks and challenges in ensuring a stable soybean supply.

Domestically produced soybeans are mainly used for making products such as tofu, while imported soybeans, genetically modified and with a higher oil yield, are mainly used for edible plant oil and feed proteins in the livestock industry.

According to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, soybean output accounted for only 2.4 percent of China's total grain output in 2021, compared with 31 percent for rice, 20 percent for wheat and 39.9 percent for corn. The land devoted to soybean production was just 8.4 million hectares last year, down 14.8 percent from 2020.

Bian Tingting, an analyst with consulting firm Shanghai Ganglian E-commerce Holding Co., known as Mysteel, said output in the 2021-22 period was the lowest in five years and the declining supply has caused prices of domestic soybeans to surge to their highest level in 10 years. As a result, use of imported varieties has been increased at the lower end of the industrial chain.

Soybean and corn are both dryland crops. In areas with good growing conditions, farmers can grow them alternately, which can help maintain soil health to ensure high and stable output. However, in areas with limited arable land, farmers have to pick one of two options. And as the economic benefit of planting is higher for corn than for soybean, most farmers opt for growing corn.

The output for every hectare of corn can be as high as 7,500 kg, while that for soybean is usually less than 3,000 kg and, as the costs for growing the two crops are similar, the gap in income can be as high as 15,000 yuan ($2,362.5) per hectare.

Confidence booster 

The Chinese Government attaches great importance to increasing soybean production. The Central Rural Work Conference at the end of last year highlighted expanding soybean and oil crop production. According to the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for national crop production released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs last December, by 2025, the area of China devoted to soybean production is expected to reach 10.7 million hectares and output is projected to hit 23 million tons.

The No.1 central document for this year, an indicator of policy priorities, listed increasing soybean and oil crop production among key tasks for the comprehensive progress of rural revitalization.

According to the document, soybean and corn rotation will be promoted in northeast China, the major producer of the crop, and rice will be replaced with soybeans in areas that have been overusing groundwater to grow rice. Combined production of corn and soybean will be promoted in areas such as northwest and southeast China. Rapeseed planting will be expanded in the Yangtze River region to expand the sources of edible oil.

In response to the Central Government's policies, Heilongjiang Province has come up with its own policies to lift soybean production.

The province will expand its related planting area to 4.56 million hectares this year, a year-on-year increase of over 666,000 hectares.

According to a recently released plan for expanding production in the province, subsidies for growing soybeans should be 3,000 yuan ($471) more for every hectare of land than those for growing corn.

Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang, also issued a plan to expand subsidies for growing soybeans. According to the document, producers can get additional subsidies for the varieties they grow and compensations for losses caused by extreme and disastrous weather.

The policies have bolstered farmer confidence in planting soybeans. Tian Shujun, head of a rural cooperative in Binxian County, Harbin, said his cooperative grows corn and soybeans alternately and this year 220 hectares of soybeans will be planted.

Tian said to improve output, large-scale planting should be developed to standardize production and reduce costs.

Zhang Bixian, head of the soybean research institute of the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, suggested farmers should try to improve yield by finetuning their planting technologies, reducing plant disease and lowering labor costs by introducing agricultural machinery.

He also suggested developing soybean processing to increase the crop's added value and selling the processed products online to expand sales.

(Print Edition Title: Better Beans, Better Supplies) 

Copyedited by G. P. Wilson 

Comments to jijing@cicgamericas.com