Healthy choices

Soybean food has been a long time dominance on the Chinese dinner table with a variety of traditional flavors such as soybean milk, beancurd jelly, soybean oil and dried beancurd.

Soybean's rich plant-based protein and fat have become more and more favored by China's increasing number of healthy diet lovers, which has given impetus for food suppliers to develop innovative products.

A recent online promotion of soy ice cream sold more than 9 million units in six months in the country.

"We have eyed a large number of Chinese consumers that are lactose intolerant, which prevents them from eating ice cream," said Zhang Dekun, general manager of the Heihe Kunpeng Biotechnology Co. Ltd. in Heilongjiang, which produces the ice cream.

The business has benefitted from a patent technology developed by Gai Junyi, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences, who helped the soybean planting province to research the replacement of animal protein with soybean protein in ice cream while retaining the sweet and delicate mouthfeel.

Several other health food options have been developed and even became hot-selling exports. Soybean noodles and spaghetti products developed by Heihe Agricultural Health Food Co. Ltd. in Heilongjiang have been sold to Germany and have seen growing popularity in the domestic market.

Led by the soaring market demand for soybean food, farmers have learned to sign with food suppliers for contractual farming.

"Some of our soybean planting is planned based on orders from food companies, which ensure the purchased price of soybeans before we plant them," said Cui Xiangmin, a rural cooperative manager in Sunwu County, Heilongjiang.

He said the contractual farming protects farmers' enthusiasm in planting and pushes them to improve the quality of the produce.

There are 36 grain processing companies with a combined capacity to process 1 million tonnes of soybean in Heilongjiang, ensuring that farmers can sell their produce.

"With all the efforts, we need to make substantial progress in developing good seeds so we can properly handle the market instability and put ourselves in a better position in the global market," said Li with the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology.