Global warming: good for soybeans, bad for everyone else
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Guo Chuanfei, a representative of the Tengda Soybean Plantation Association, Kedong county, Heilongjiang Province.
Natural disasters can do great damage to our harvest of soybeans. Take this year for example. We encountered a big draught in May when the seeds were planted and a great amount of rain in June when they germinated. Therefore at first it was hard for the seeds to survive, and then they were all rotten in the field because of the rain.
There are around 300 families in our association with over 14,000 mu (9.33 km²) of land. Usually, the harvest per mu is around 120-140 kilograms, but this year, we only have around 20 kilograms on average.
Luckily, such natural disasters are not very often. Soybeans like warm weather and water. If only the plants can get enough sunshine after rain, or even flood, it wouldn't do much harm to the output.
If climate change changes anything for soybeans growing, I would say the climate has changed it for good. To evaluate the quality of soybeans, we use the term "accumulated temperature," which means the sum temperature of the soybeans since they was planted till it was harvested.
In the past, the accumulated temperature would be around 2,000 C in 110 days, but nowadays it can reach 2,100 C. Higher temperature would lift the protein percentage of the soybeans, which would increase the quality in the end.
Frankly, I don't think there's a need for us to tackle climate change. The high temperature is good, at least for soybeans.
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