Soybean Production

Ranking on soybean, used in tofu, miso, soysauce and natto. While wheat is often cultivated as a secondary crop, soybean is often used in crop rotation. Like wheat, the production of soybean has a history of repeated increase and decrease.

Trivial knowledge about soybean

The planting of soybean has been maintained at about 400,000ha from the early Meiji era to the end of the Taisho era. Later, the planting of soybean decreased due to the import of soybean from the northeastern part of China. Due to the move towards increasing production in the postwar period, the planting of soybean returned once again to about 400,000ha until the mid 1950s but decreased once again due to the import of American soybeans and import liberalization in 1961. Later, soybean began being planted once again as the main crop in crop rotation but has been decreasing until this day due to the diversification of crop rotation and meteorological disasters.

Hokkaido had the greatest production in 2008, with close to twice the amount of production in Akita, ranked second. Hokkaido cultivates a large amount of soybeans in a vast area of land, but the amount of consumption in Hokkaido is low. This is believed to be due to the shift away from Japanese food, resulting in less consumption of miso, soysauce and tofy.

The amount of production per 100 thousand population is greatest in Saga. Of the 40,000ha of paddy fields, crop rotation is conducted in approximately 10,000ha, and soybean is cultivated in a large area of such fields for crop rotation. Through the construction of culvert facilities and drying facilities for wheat and soybeans, the prefecture is focusing on increasing wheat and soybean production and the amount of production per 10a is also greatest in Saga.