Soybeans are an important global crop. It is grown for its oil and protein. The bulk of the crop is solvent extracted for vegetable oil and the defatted soy meal is used for animal feed. A very small proportion of the crop is consumed directly for food by humans. Soybean products, however, appear in a large variety of processed foods.

Soybeans have been a crucial crop in eastern Asia since long before written records, and they are still a major crop in China, Korea, and Japan today. Soy was not actually used as a food item until they discovered fermentation techniques around 2000 years ago. Prior to fermented products such as soy sauce, tempeh, natto, and miso, soy was considered sacred for its use in crop rotation as a method of fixing nitrogen. The plants would be plowed under to clear the field for food crops.

Soy was first introduced to Europe in the early 1700s and the United States in 1765, where it was first grown for hay. Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter in 1770 mentioning sending soybeans home from England. Soybeans did not become an important crop outside of Asia until about 1910. In America, soy was considered an industrial product only and not utilized as a food prior to the 1920's.

Soybeans: World Supply and Distribution - Thousand Metric Tons

Uses For Soybean / Soya Been Soybeans can be broadly classified as "vegetable" (garden) or field (oil) types. Vegetable types cook more easily, have a mild nutty flavor, better texture, are larger in size, higher in protein, and lower in oil than field types. Tofu and soymilk producers prefer the higher protein cultivars bred from vegetable soybeans originally brought to the United States in the late 1930s. The "garden" cultivars are generally not suitable for mechanical combine harvesting because they have a tendency for the pods to shatter on reaching maturity.

Among the legumes, the soybean, also classed as an oilseed, is pre-eminent for its high (38-45%) protein content as well as its high (20%) oil content. Soybeans are the leading agricultural export in the United States. The bulk of the soybean crop is grown for oil production, with the high-protein defatted and "toasted" soy meal used as livestock feed. A smaller percentage of soybeans are used directly for human consumption.

The beans can be processed in a variety of ways. Common forms of soy (or soya) include soy meal, soy flour, "soy milk", tofu, textured vegetable protein (TVP, which is made into a wide variety of vegetarian foods, some of them intended to imitate meat), tempeh, soy lecithin and soybean oil. Soybeans are also the primary ingredient involved in the production of soy sauce (or shoyu). Other products

Soybeans are also used in industrial products including oils, soap, cosmetics, resins, plastics, inks, crayons, solvents, clothing, and biodiesel. Soybeans are also used as fermenting stock to make a brand of vodka.  

Today, very high quality textile fibers are made commercially from okara or soy pulp, a by- product of tofu production.