That says that the majority of soy meal goes to animal feed. I couldn't actually get the amount of soy beans used for animal feed. Perhaps you can find it.
According to this [1], they were forecasting about 4,200 million bushels of soybeans being harvested in 2016 with nearly 2,000 million bushels being exported (about 47 percent according to the source).
I tried to find a reputable source for soy bean use in the US and failed, but some sources I was able to find (mostly vegan activist groups) stated that 80% of soy bean use is for meal while 20% is for oil. Of the 80% used for meal, 97-98% is used for animal feed while 2-3% is used for food.
As far as I can tell that means that if we round things up to the nearest 10%, about half of the soybeans grown are exported, 40% is used for animal feed (cattle, chickens and pigs) 10% for oil (of which some is cooking oil) and a negligible amount used directly for human consumption.
Possible the parent was considering only cattle consumption because another source I found suggested that you don't want to feed cattle more than 15-25% of their diet on soy because they can't digest it. Chickens and pigs presumably don't have the same problem.
I find it interesting that in truth the largest category of "use" for soybeans in the US is as an export trade good. I wasn't actually following the discussion above closely so I'm not sure how it impacts anything. However, it occurs to me that possibly the land could be put to better use. However it was also interesting to me that according to your source Wisconsin has 11K soybean growers over 1.6 million acres. That's an average farm size of 145 acres. As a person who grew up in the prairies of Canada but now lives in Japan, that seems to me to be both not so big and also gigantic :-) (I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese farm bigger than about 30 acres!)
According to this [1], they were forecasting about 4,200 million bushels of soybeans being harvested in 2016 with nearly 2,000 million bushels being exported (about 47 percent according to the source).
I tried to find a reputable source for soy bean use in the US and failed, but some sources I was able to find (mostly vegan activist groups) stated that 80% of soy bean use is for meal while 20% is for oil. Of the 80% used for meal, 97-98% is used for animal feed while 2-3% is used for food.
As far as I can tell that means that if we round things up to the nearest 10%, about half of the soybeans grown are exported, 40% is used for animal feed (cattle, chickens and pigs) 10% for oil (of which some is cooking oil) and a negligible amount used directly for human consumption.
Possible the parent was considering only cattle consumption because another source I found suggested that you don't want to feed cattle more than 15-25% of their diet on soy because they can't digest it. Chickens and pigs presumably don't have the same problem.
I find it interesting that in truth the largest category of "use" for soybeans in the US is as an export trade good. I wasn't actually following the discussion above closely so I'm not sure how it impacts anything. However, it occurs to me that possibly the land could be put to better use. However it was also interesting to me that according to your source Wisconsin has 11K soybean growers over 1.6 million acres. That's an average farm size of 145 acres. As a person who grew up in the prairies of Canada but now lives in Japan, that seems to me to be both not so big and also gigantic :-) (I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese farm bigger than about 30 acres!)
[1] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/soybeans-oil-crops/rel...