More than 600 million pounds of the soybean oil produced
annually in the United States are used for nonedible
applications, including the production of industrial
materials (American Soybean Association, 2001). More
than half of this use of soybean oil falls in the category
of fatty acids, soaps, and feed. The remainder of the
nonedible soybean market is used for the manufacture
of inks, paints, varnishes, resins, plastics, and biodiesel.
Although the use of soybean oil for industrial purposes
is economically significant, it represents only 4% of the
total consumption of US soybean oil. By contrast, more
than 13 billion pounds of US soybean oil are used annually
in foods and food processing. (For more information,
see SoyStats 2001 at http://www.unitedsoybean.org
/soystats2001.)