You may unthinkingly pluck a can or two of these off of your grocer’s shelves or you may well have some stored away in your kitchen pantry. The simple can of soybeans – providing good taste and nutrition - is becoming more popular with consumers. However, with this increased demand, the Amazon rainforest faces immense risk.
To explain the connection, soybeans (and other crops) require land to grow. With more people around the world turning to soybeans as a menu staple, more land has been cleared – including considerable deforestation of our Earth’s Amazon rainforest. With more of the rainforest gone, fire hazards increase dramatically … should this happen, the Amazon rainforest could be gone in an instant.
While I am all for having food in one’s cupboards and know how vital it is to feed people of this world, we must also pay very close attention to our planet’s dwindling resources – many of which cannot be renewed. The Amazon rainforest is precious to us as well as a considerable array of plants and animals who call this home. Without their home, these species must either try and relocate or die.
The statistics speak for themselves – the world’s soybean harvest has jumped dramatically since 1950. Within the past 50 years, worldwide production has increased from 17 millions tons to a whopping 250 million tons. And, to make matters worse, more people are turning to soybeans in their diets – these are no small numbers! Whether for the poorer countries (whose residents cannot afford to eat meat) or for the more health-conscious consumer, global demand for the simple soybean is growing at an average of six million tons per year.
While there seems to be no slowing down for soybean production, maybe you and your family could slow down on purchasing the beans? Could you toss only one can into your grocery cart as opposed to two?
