New data presented at the ‘From Soya to Sustainability’ event showed 3.4Mt of CO2 equivalent could be saved by increasing the production of pulse crops and reducing the amount of imported soya bean meal.
This would cut the agricultural industry’s footprint by 7%, according to a study by Farm Carbon Toolkit. Better use of home-grown pulses has the potential to cut carbon emissions by more than 2.5 times previous estimates.
The reduction can be achieved by increasing pulse production to 20% of the current total area and replacing 50% of the imported soya bean meal currently being fed to livestock, explained John McArthur, managing director of McArthur BDC. Showing what can be achieved by this shift are the twin aims of the NCS Project – a four-year, £5.9 million project funded by Defra’s Farming Futures R&D Fund.
“That saving is driven by four main factors – fuel use, synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use, both directly and indirectly, and swapping imported soya bean meal to UK pulses,” he said.
The 17 partner organisations in the project had initially set out to show its twin aims would achieve a net target carbon reduction of 1.5Mt. But data processed since the project began in April 2023 have revealed the potential gains that can be made from a move away from imported soya to UK grown beans are far greater than previously estimated.
Gemma Hoskins, UK Director of Mighty Earth highlighted the link between imported soya and deforestation in Latin America. Figures quoted by traders claiming soya was deforestation free was “maths jiggery pokery” with no transparency with the data used to calculate their claims, she said.
EU deforestation legislation coming into force on 30th December 2025 would cover a range of commodities and covered both illegal and legal deforestation, she added. “In order to be able to confirm if you have legal or illegal deforestation within your supply chain you require farm-level traceability.”
Certification has been designed to signal demand for deforestation-free soya, but traceability was an issue here too, she warned. “The credibility of certificates and the ability to drive a clean supplier approach has been really limited within the soya supply sector.
“What we want to see now is farmers and the feed companies at the heart of this conversation and to empower people to put pressure on traders.”
A route out of soya for livestock sector
Solutions presented by partners in the NCS project included presentation of research carried out by SRUC, The James Hutton Institute and Agrii, and the experience of farmers involved in the project.
Lee Truelove, Head of Regenerative Farming at First Milk said the cooperative was working to support the supply chain to find a ‘route out of soya’.
“Is certified deforestation-free soya the end game? I suggest it isn’t,” he said. “Even if that soy is certified questions still exist about how it’s grown. We also need to think about ghost acres. It’s all very well being efficient on the farm, but that can be undermined by how many acres somewhere else in the world are needed to supply feed for the cows.”
The alternative was obvious, he said. “We’re talking about UK-grown proteins including beans, and we definitely support that at First Milk.” Feeding trials by First Milk producers had been positive and would be repeated this winter, he said.
“We’re going to expand it, but we do think the potential is there. As a dairy cooperative, we’re looking to help the supply chain because we do think there is a route out of soya.”
Jos Houdijk of SRUC said that faba beans were also viable as an alternative to soya for growing pigs and chickens, but processing made them better. “If we dehull faba beans we lift the digestibility and the concentration of amino acids, and that gives us opportunity to increase soya replacement potential.”
An NCS trial using the bean variety Lynx, combined with dehulling and toasting, found that broilers (meat chickens) fed this variety up to 30% reached the same finished weights as those fed on soya, but with an improved feed conversion ratio.
“We produced these chickens with 68% less soya bean meal input and the carbon footprint saving was almost 40%,” he said.
Arable and poultry producer John Seed said he started looking to replace soya when the egg price was below the cost of production, but soon also saw the environmental cost. “Eighty two percent of the carbon emissions from my farm came from purchased feed and the soya predominantly.”
He found that by feeding beans, even at 10% he reduced emissions by about 400t/year.
