By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Steve Waddle tends to various crops on his 1,400-acre farm in Champaign County. But he never imagined his 200 acres of soybeans would be as coveted as they are today.
Thanks to a high demand for soybeans in Asian markets, Ohio farmers can get up to $12.10 per bushel for this crop, as opposed to the usual $10 per bushel. And that, Waddle says, is another good reason to have soybeans around.

“In 1986, Honda started shipping parts from Japan to their new manufacturing plants in Ohio, but sending the empty shipping containers back was expensive,” he said. “So they looked for a product to fill the containers for the trip back to Japan and found soybeans.”

Just a few farmers got on board when the program was initiated. According to Joe Hanusik of Harmony Agricultural Products of Ohio (or HAPI-Ohio), this represented more than 45,000 acres of soybeans. But not just any soybean would do – to get increased value, Honda decided to develop food-grade products, producing smaller volumes but with higher profit margins.

To control the quality levels and the research and development of new varieties, Honda built its own soybean processing plant (HAPI-Ohio) in Marysville, which is located in Union County – just 60 miles from Waddle.

HAPI-Ohio was originally going to be called Honda Agricultural Products. At the last minute Honda was concerned about using its name in a non-vehicle business, so the name was changed.
Farmers in this part of the state aren’t concerned with name changes. They’re just happy to be a part of the demand for soybeans. “I’m a very small part of it, as I just have 200 acres of soybeans at this time,” Waddle said. “This is our first year at this and a lot of it depends on how well we get along with the weed control.

“Harvesting is a bit of a pain because the combine needs to be completely cleaned out. Not just slightly clean; clean, like new.
“Honda ships the car parts here in containers, then the beans are processed, bagged and shipped back overseas.”

Waddle currently receives $10 per bushel for his beans, but if all goes well farmers like him will see a premium of $1.50-$2.10 extra, depending on the quality of protein content.

“When you talk about all these containers coming in, immediately the associates started thinking, you know, how can we fill them up?” said Ron Lietzke, assistant manager of communications at Honda of America.

Hanusik said Japan doesn’t have enough land to raise the agricultural products it consumes, so there is a market for food-grade soybeans.

And, the customers like Ohio soybeans.

“Primarily they like Ohio soybeans because of the high protein value and consistent supply year in and year out,” Hanusik said.
“Limited production land available in Japan tends to drive up the price of Japanese domestic soybeans, so even though soybeans can be raised here in the U.S. and shipped to Japan, we can actually compete or be under cost with the domestically grown soybeans in Japan.”

The beans go from Columbus to Chicago, then eventually on to Seattle, where most of the products are loaded on a barge and shipped to different ports in Japan.

“The bean is another source of demand and we need demand to keep the prices up,” Waddle said.

“The seed cost is cheaper because they don’t have all that investment of development.

“There are two downsides to this. The first being, it’s hard to go into a field and rid the field of large weeds by hand, even though 20 years ago we did this by hand all the time. The second is that herbicides such as Roundup cannot be used on these beans. But it’s worth all the hassle.”

Waddle and other farmers have no control over the market or the weather. But they can control how many soybeans they can produce any given season.

“We’re looking for ways to raise profits on the farm, and if the demand for these beans increases, so will the profits,” he said.