I never ever imagined that we would open this Soybean Guide issue with a story on soyfoods. I mean, sure we would run a consumer story somewhere. We do have that much sense of duty, just like the organizers at almost every soybean meeting you go to.
But let s get real. We would never lead with such a story, for one big, all-too-obvious reason. The story never changes. I ve been covering soys for over 20 years, and this story about soyfoods is always a tale of what might be, not of what is.
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Well& that has changed, so here s your issue of Soybean Guide, and as you ll see, it opens with Mary Wiley s consumer soyfood story.
Putting the soyfood story up front is our way of saying we think this really deserves your attention. I can still hardly believe we did this, but then I take another look at the numbers and I know why we did.
Canadian soyfood sales have tripled to over $350 million, and even this is just a start. Soyfoods have broken out of the health food stores, with 70 per cent of soyfoods now sold through mainstream outlets. Even more impressive, Canadian food makers have released 700 new soyfood products in the last decade into a market were 71 per cent of Canadians now believe that soybeans are good for them, and over half believe that soybeans will help them fight obesity.
Is this the tipping point? Decide for yourselves, but it does look like it to us. The growth of soyfoods is self-fuelling. Increasingly, the soyfood story is one of how to seize the opportunity, not how to create the market.
Meanwhile, breeders, growers and industry are enhancing our Pacific Rim outlook, while at the same time they re creating new uses, ranging from heart-healthy oils to biofuels.
As Philip Shaw rightly observes in his Going Global on page 12, the main benefit from studying global markets is to figure out ways of not getting trapped in them. The soybean sector has learned much that it can teach, including to many outside of agriculture.
