RUSAGARA MUVUNANKIKO Valens
Soybeans may look like a simple crop, but they sit at the center of one of the world’s biggest food questions: should limited harvests go to people, or to the animals that people eat? Behind that question lies a much bigger story about global trade, nutrition, and the future of food security in places like Rwanda and the rest of Africa.
Soybeans are one of the most important crops in the global food system. Worldwide production now stands at more than 400 million tonnes a year, according to data regularly tracked by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Its 2026 reports point to a crop that is only growing in importance across international markets.
Most of that soybean supply comes from a small group of countries. Brazil, the United States and Argentina are the dominant producers, giving North and South America outsized control over global supply. China, India, Paraguay, and several other nations also grow soybeans at scale, but the Americas remain the engine room of the world’s soy trade.
Here is a fact that surprises many people: roughly 77 percent of the world’s soybeans are used to feed livestock, mainly as a protein-rich feed ingredient. Only about 7 percent goes directly into human foods such as tofu, soy milk, edamame and tempeh.
That does not mean the livestock share is disconnected from human nutrition, though. When soybeans are processed, the oil is extracted first, and what remains soybean meal is packed with protein. That meal becomes feed for poultry, pigs, and fish. In other words, the soybeans that never reach a human plate directly still end up supporting the meat, egg, and dairy industries that people rely on every day. Soybeans, in this sense, work quietly in the background of the global protein supply chain.
There is no single, universally agreed rule saying exactly how much soy each person should eat every day. However, the Planetary Health Diet, a framework developed by scientists to balance human health with environmental sustainability, suggests around 25 grams of dry soy foods per person per day as part of a healthy, sustainable diet.
That figure becomes a useful benchmark for comparing what is actually produced against what nutrition science recommends.
Africa is expanding its soybean production, though it remains far behind the world’s major growers. For the continent, the real question is not simply whether soybeans can be grown, but how production can be scaled up, processed locally, and directed toward addressing protein needs and malnutrition.
Rwanda offers a clear example of both the opportunity and the challenge.
According to the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), soybeans were grown on about 40,059 hectares during Season A of 2024, producing roughly 17,051 tonnes, an average yield of about 0.4 tonnes per hectare.
Season B showed similar figures: the same area of land and a comparable harvest. Combined, the two seasons produced approximately 34,102 tonnes of soybeans. This data comes from NISR’s Seasonal Agricultural Survey, which tracks cultivated land, production, and yields across the country’s farming seasons.
Simple arithmetic offers a striking way to picture the gap between supply and need.
If the world’s estimated 428 million tonnes of soybean production were divided evenly among the planet’s roughly 8.2 billion people, each person’s theoretical share would come to about 143 grams a day. That number is not a measure of what people actually eat, it is a mathematical exercise, since most of that supply goes toward livestock feed and industrial uses rather than direct human consumption.
Running the same exercise for Rwanda tells a different story. Dividing the country’s roughly 34,000 tonnes of annual soybean production among its approximately 14 million people works out to only about 6 to 7 grams per person per day, far below the Planetary Health Diet’s indicative benchmark of 25 grams.
Again, this is not a claim that the average Rwandan eats 6 to 7 grams of soy daily. It is simply a comparison of national production against population size, a way of visualizing how far local supply would need to grow to meet even a modest nutritional benchmark if soy were the sole source being measured.
This raises a genuinely difficult question: when soybean supplies are limited, should they be prioritized for direct human consumption or for livestock feed?
There is no easy answer. Soybeans can deliver protein straight to people’s plates, but they also underpin the poultry, pork, fish, and dairy industries that supply protein in other forms. The debate touches on food security, nutrition science, economics, and the practical realities of livestock production and reasonable people can weigh these priorities differently depending on their circumstances and goals.
What emerges from these numbers is a picture of soybeans as something more complex than a single-purpose crop. They are not simply “food for people” or “feed for animals.” Instead, soybeans sit at the intersection of human nutrition, livestock farming, international trade, and food security a small bean carrying an outsized share of responsibility for how the world feeds itself.
As Africa and countries like Rwanda in particular, look to expand local soybean production and processing, this balancing act between human needs and livestock demand will only become more important to get right.
