Many countries in the world depend on soybeans and other legumes as key sources of dietary protein. However, for the past 30-35 years, soybeans have seldom been produced in the United States for the purpose of being consumed in whole food form by humans. Instead, a $20 billion industry has grown up around the cultivation of soybeans as an "oilseed" crop that can be traded alongside of other interchangeable commodities like rapeseed, sunflowerseed, and cottonseed. Even though the United States has become the world's larger grower of soybeans (producing approximately 83 million metric tons of soybeans on 75 million acres of land), these soybeans are not being cultivated for human food use but for other purposes (their extractable oil and their processing into animal feed). This historical trend has given rise to a whole new classification of soybeans as an "oilseed crop" or "oilseed commodity." When economists talk about soybeans that are intended to be consumed in whole food form by humans, they use the terms "vegetable soybeans" or "garden soybeans" or "edible soybeans" to describe this food.