Is soy destroying the rainforest?
The short answer
Soy is a major driver of deforestation in South America, but more than three-quarters of it is grown to feed animals. Tofu and soy milk account for a small fraction.
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Sample data. The figures and sources on this page are demonstration records showing how evidence will be presented. They are approximate and have not yet been through our review process. Read about how we will verify evidence.
- Animal feed
- Direct human food
% of global soy. Axis starts at zero.
Data: Ritchie (2021). Sample
The remainder is mostly soybean oil used in cooking, processed foods and biofuel.
What does the evidence show?
Soy expansion, especially in Brazil's Cerrado savanna and the Amazon, has been one of the biggest drivers of land conversion in South America over the past two decades.
Around 77% of global soy is used as animal feed, mostly for chickens and pigs. Roughly 7% is eaten directly by people.
The soy in most tofu and soy milk sold in Europe and North America is grown outside deforestation frontiers, often in North America or Europe itself.Source 1: Drivers of deforestation: soy, and what it is used forSource 2: Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers
Why does this happen?
Soybeans are crushed into oil and protein-rich meal. The meal is the cheapest concentrated protein for livestock feed, which is why demand for it tracks demand for meat.
Cattle ranching remains the largest single driver of Amazon deforestation; soy often follows on land already cleared for pasture.
Bottom line
Soy is a deforestation problem, but mainly through animal feed. Eating tofu instead of chicken reduces, rather than increases, the soy your diet requires.
The strongest counterargument
“Vegans eat soy, so vegan diets drive the same deforestation”
If soy is destroying forests and vegans rely on soy, isn't a vegan diet part of the problem?
What's true about it
- Soy is genuinely linked to deforestation, and some soy foods are made from South American beans.
- A vegan diet that leans heavily on soy does contribute demand, however small.
What may be misleading
- The soy in a person's diet is a small fraction of the soy consumed indirectly through meat, dairy and eggs.
- Because animals convert feed inefficiently, eating soy directly uses far less soy per gram of protein than eating chicken fed on soy.
What remains uncertain
- Traceability in soy supply chains is improving but still incomplete, so origin for any given product can be hard to verify.
Evidence strength
Why this rating: Production, trade and land-use data from independent sources agree on where soy goes and what drives its expansion.
Supported by multiple systematic reviews or large, consistent studies using different methods, with few plausible alternative explanations.
What remains uncertain?Open questions the evidence does not yet settle.
- How much of recent Cerrado clearance is attributable to soy versus pasture and other crops varies by year and dataset.
Methodology: how we know thisHow the numbers were produced and what they leave out.
- Soy end-use figures come from FAO food balance sheets and supply-chain tracking.
- Deforestation attribution draws on satellite land-use mapping combined with trade data.
Read our full evidence methodology.
Claims used on this page2 claims, each with its own record, rating and sources.
More than three-quarters of the world's soy is fed to livestock; only around 7% is eaten directly by people.
Soy grown for tofu and soy milk is a small slice of the total. Most soy feeds chickens, pigs and cows.
Livestock uses around three-quarters of the world's agricultural land while supplying under a fifth of its calories.
Most farmland feeds animals, not people directly. That land delivers a relatively small share of our food.
Sources
Each source links to our record of what it found, its limitations and what we used it for, with a link to the original.
- 1Drivers of deforestation: soy, and what it is used for
Hannah Ritchie (2021). Our World in Data.
- 2Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers
Joseph Poore, Thomas Nemecek (2018). Science.