Dr. Marion Nestle, longtime NYU professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, with additional faculty roles at UC San Francisco and Cornell, is best known for analyzing the intersections of food, politics, and health, often exposing how government policy, corporate lobbying, and food industry marketing shape what we eat.
What’s going on with soybeans? Farm Action to the rescue
If you are wondering about the effects of China’s not buying US soybeans (and the Trump administrations bailout of Argentinean soybeans), Farm Action says the real problem started decades ago.
Its analysis is well worth reading.
The numbers reveal how concentrated our agricultural system has become. In 2024:
- Soybeans were the number one U.S. agricultural export, worth about $24.5 billion.
- More than half of all U.S. soybeans were exported, and China historically bought more than half of that total (roughly $12.6 billion worth).
- Soybeans contributed $46.9 billion to total U.S. farm income.
More than half of U.S. soybeans are exported, with China (represented in dark green) historically purchasing more than half of that total. Source: USDA.
The current crisis, it says, is “the result of decades of decisions that put export growth ahead of food security at home.”
Farm Action wants agricultural policies that will break the cycle of overproduction and bailouts.
- Grow food, not just livestock feed crops: Incentivize production of fruits, vegetables, and nutrient-dense crops for local markets.
- Reform subsidies: Redirect federal spending away from endless bailouts and toward programs that reward resilience and healthy food production.
- Rebuild local infrastructure: Invest in regional processing, storage, and distribution to give farmers alternatives to export markets.
- Break up corporate monopolies: Enforce antitrust laws to restore competition in input and processing markets.
How to do this, it does not say. But these goals are worth advocacy.
Start on them now.
We might get lucky.
Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, which she chaired from 1988-2003 and from which she officially retired in September 2017. She is also Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been awarded honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky (2012) and from the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College (2016). In 2023, she was awarded The Edinburgh Medal (for science and society).
