America’s soybean industry has fired a loud warning shot at seed oil skeptics.
www.producer.com
On Tuesday, the American Soybean Association said that a ban on seed oils in the U.S. food supply would inflict billions in economic damage to farmers and force American consumers to spend an additional USD$7.7 billion annually on replacement products like palm oil, olive oil and animal fat.
The data comes from
a study commissioned by the United Soybean Board, which hired the World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services, a consultancy, to evaluate the impacts of a U.S. ban on seed oils like soybean, canola, corn, sunflower and cottonseed oil.
The ban would force the U.S. to import large volumes of palm and olive oil, thus driving up the price of palm oil, the study found.
“Since significant quantities of olive and palm oil are not produced domestically, the US becomes more reliant on imports of vegetable oils,” the report says.
“Under the flat veg oil consumption scenario, the shift in US food consumption to palm oil results in higher palm oil prices with palm selling at a 78 per cent average premium to soybean oil prices over the 2025/26-2035/36 period.”
Plus, Americans consume about 58 lbs of soybean, canola and corn oil annually, per capita. Replacing that with other oils and fats would be complicated and costly, the report noted.