SOY

written by

posted on

December 3, 2024

We've had a breakthrough in soy. For the umpteenth time, a patron asked whether or not we use soy.

If you've been reading these blogs, you know I dealt at length with PUFAS (Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids) in September, but I did not have the definitive data I now have. Thanks to this patron, my hunch has been confirmed.

The anti-soy/PUFA (Omega 6) mentality permeates the wellness community for good reason. Many farmers like us, trying to meet the demands of patrons, immediately do all they can to eliminate any vestige of questionable material. However, as I explained in September, wellness fads can whipsaw back and forth as easily as pharmaceutical fads.

Studies linking soy to any number of issues abound, but I've always questioned if it's processed, or broken apart, soybeans versus soybean meal.

Most feedstocks for animals use only the meal, which has all the oils pressed out. The oil is too valuable to feed to animals; it's more valuable to sell to humans. Besides, animal rations are after the protein, not the oils.

To my knowledge, none of the "soy studies" use whole soybeans; they only use the oil-less soybean meal. We all know that breaking apart whole foods, especially in ultra-processing, changes their nutritional and metabolic capacity dramatically. Think about the difference between high fructose corn syrup and corn on the cob.

One of the reasons I've come to this conclusion is because for many years we've had soy-allergic patrons eat our chickens without any problems.

We've had our chickens checked by energy fields, pendulums, crystals, chromatography --yes, we have all sorts of fringe patrons. But we love the various ideas seekers bring to the table-- literally.

Here is the linoleic acid percentage (omega 6) difference between whole soybeans and soybean meal:

That's an off-the-charts difference. What about substitutes people often use to satisfy the anti-soy folks? The most common is either peas or fish. Here is the linoleic acid percentage in those:

In other words, the low end of whole soybeans is statistically identical to the upper end of the peas and fish. And as a practical matter, in farm feedstuffs, nobody checks. What about some other substitutes?

Here you go:

Every single one of these is far higher than whole soybeans.

Why is this important?

Because at Polyface, we use whole soybeans, non-Genetically Modified, from local farmers in our omnivore feed rations (poultry and pigs).

None of the substitutes grows around here and our oceans are already being overfished.

Our use of whole soybeans patronizes local farmers in an enterprise they know how to grow and have the infrastructure to plant and harvest. Neighborly mutual interdependence.

Is it perfect? Nothing this side of paradise is perfect. If you're looking for perfection, you could argue that eggs and chickens shouldn't even be grown commercially but should be a byproduct of kitchen scrap recycling like they've historically been. But we're far away from that, so let's use our information and techno-infrastructure to grow them the best and most efficient way we can, with a view to the whole planet's ecology.

Due to the tests and anecdotal patron stories surrounding Polyface pastured poultry and pork, I've felt fairly confident that my hunch about the difference between soybean meal and whole soybeans was accurate. Now I'm thrilled to have definitive proof.

Both you as patrons and us as purveyors, can hold our heads high knowing that the poultry and pork from Polyface adhere to high standards both nutritionally and ecologically.

And to make sure it's not missed, thank you for getting unprocessed meat and poultry.

The breading and additives on ultra-processed meat and poultry are toxic, even if the raw protein isn't. Never have domestic culinary arts been easier. Great-grandma would swoon if she saw our techno-gadgetized kitchens.

Thank you for scratch cooking, for eating together as a family, for enjoying left-overs (the benchmark of those who "get it"), and for voting for health with your food dollars.

We're all in this together, and we're delighted to be sharing the wellness journey with you. Now go eat some Polyface pork and chicken.

Thank you.

-Joel

soy

Chicken

Pork

pigs

Duplication

"How does this scale?" Whenever someone asks me that question, the underlying assumption is that production volume requires consolidation, concentration, and centralization. In other words, the only way to feed the world is to make bigger chicken houses in one place, bigger canneries in one place, bigger machines and bigger warehouses. I remember well being vilified by a Smithsonian historian at a food conference where he and I were both on a panel. When I dared to suggest bigger is not always better, he interrupted me and ranted for 10 minutes on why bigger is always better. "A bigger fort was always bigger than a smaller one. A bigger gun was always better than a smaller one." He went on and on about how historical accuracy and authenticity demands addiction to bigger. But biology is not forts and guns. It's not mechanical. Critters have an optimal size. As animal behaviorist guru Temple Grandin says, living things demand energy for three things: reproduction, growth, and immunological function. All three must be in balance. When anyone selects for only one of those traits, the other two suffer. That's why American dairy cows only have two lactations on average. When they milk as heavily as our one-trait genetic selection asks, they don't breed and have all sorts of sickness problems. Nature does not scale through concentration; it scales with duplication. If nature wants more oak, it doesn't make one big tree; it makes acorns. If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow; it makes calves. If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a monster tomato plant; it makes a bunch of seeds that make more tomato plants. Nature scales with duplication. At Polyface, rather than having a chicken house big enough for 15,000 chickens, we have 170 little 120 square foot portable shelters holding 75 birds apiece and giving us cumulative capacity for 15,000. But they're spread out in modules, duplicated, to give us the production volume. We run pigs in groupings of 35-50. A Smithfield confinement facility might house 5,000 hogs in a bigger-than-football-field-sized facility. The stench is unbearable. By spreading these pigs out across the landscape in small groups we get the same scale without any of the ecological, immunological, or animal welfare dysfunction. This could even be said of farming in general. People see the massive corn, soybean, and alfalfa farms in the mid-west and wonder how we would possibly survive without those massive, single-species outfits. The fact is they aren't even producing food. Half the soybeans are exported to other countries; those markets are drying up rapidly with competition from other countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Nearly half the corn goes to taxpayer-subsidized ethanol. The alfalfa goes to Japan and Saudi Arabia to feed racehorses. By and large, all that production isn't even food. The fact is we don't need to produce all those commodities and even if we needed it all for food, we could do it in a more spread out, diversified platform. America has 35 million acres in lawns. We have 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. All of this could be turned into duplicative production, like acorns for oak trees. My point is this: scale as commonly understood in modern American lexicon is completely anti-ecological. The real mechanism for scale is duplication. A more democratized production creating volume through multiplicative nodes is the way nature works. This is why farms like Polyface, with spread out infrastructure in repeated modules offers multiple advantages. Polyface can't feed the world by itself, and we have no desire to build an empire trying to. But thousands of Polyfaces can feed the world. Indeed, they're the only way to do it for the next 500 years. This is one reason why we invest heavily in germinating new young farmers. Our stewardship and apprenticeship programs are all about this kind of duplication. In fact, Aug. 21-22 we're hosting the Stockman Grass Farmer's Launching Young Farmers conference where we'll feature 8 of our graduates who were 20 years old, no money, no land, and at 40 are full-time farming without government subsidies. If you ever dreamed of bootstrapping a farming career, you should come. We still have room. It will be the most profound agricultural conference in America this year. Information is on our website on the education tab. For most of you, the fact that you keep us in business to duplicate production and the farmers who will carry these principles forward, indicates your heart investing in an authentic food and farming model. Thank you for making it all possible.

SOY

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