Soy Canada connects virtually with Asian customers

Mar 22, 2022

Japanese and Southeast Asian food companies, buyers and importers of soybeans learned about Canada’s soybean value chain in a series of two virtual seminars held earlier this month. Hosted by Soy Canada, these virtual trade missions were live-streamed on March 1 and 4, 2022.

“We’re always looking for opportunities to share the work the Canadian soybean industry is doing to deliver high quality, safe and sustainable products,” says Brian Innes, Executive Director, Soy Canada. “These virtual seminars provided a good alternative to in-person trade missions and made it possible to reach a larger audience. They also offer a new opportunity to make connections and share timely information that buyers are looking for, like addressing transportation challenges and soybean acre forecasts for the upcoming growing season.”

Nearly 300 people participated in the events from China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Following the theme of the events – Delivering Excellence Today and Tomorrow – participants learned about every aspect of the Canadian soybean value chain, from seed research and development, right through to final product delivery. Two feature key-note speakers presented market and commodity outlooks and freight and logistics updates, both popular topics with buyers of Canadian soybeans.

The seminars also included presentations that highlighted the advantages of sourcing Canadian soybeans – including growing conditions, Canada’s traceability program and food safety processes and standards.

“We look forward to connecting our members with customers again in-person, but for now, we are thrilled with the strong interest we had in our virtual seminars and the connections we have developed,” added Innes.

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Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”