
While attending the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Convention, Intern Kate Munson caught up with Executive Director of the Oklahoma Soybean Board Rick Reimer to talk about the variety of products that soybeans are being used in.
“The best thing about soybeans is that they are continuously coming up with new things that they can be used in, and that is a result of the Soybean Checkoff, which funds New Uses Research. We call soybeans the miracle crop of many uses,” Reimer said.
Soybeans are a summer crop.. Soybean meal is used primarily for livestock feed. Soybean oil can be used in cosmetics, paints, plastics, fuels, and many other things. “There is just no end to the things you can do with soybeans,” he said.
So far 2024 has been a good year in the soybean industry, according to Reimer. Soybeans are a summer crop and require a bit of rain in July and August which has been granted in Oklahoma this year. The state cultivates roughly 600,000 acres of soybeans.
“It is a good number [of acres] for our state,” he explained. “It is fairly small for some of the ‘I’ states up North, but nevertheless, it is an important product for Oklahoma farmers. In fact, soybeans are the number two planted crop in Oklahoma much to people’s surprise.”
Reimer knows that youth are the future of any industry and feels very fortunate that the five-member board of directors of Oklahoma Soybean saw fit to approve the hiring of an education coordinator. He said, “Ginger is our education coordinator, and she is a veteran of the classroom and has lots of great ideas about educating students. She was doing a lot of ag days and even teaching in classrooms, but she couldn’t cover enough ground by herself, so she started doing teacher workshops.”
Teachers attend the workshops and Ginger, along with Oklahoma Soybean, gives them the curriculum and supplies to teach lessons in their classrooms. “We recently asked the teachers how many students they had, and to date, they have reached 19,000 students in Oklahoma with the message about where their food comes from, and specifically about how soybeans and soybean meal and oil are used.”