Today we’ll talk about our participation in the citizen science project ‘Soy in 1000 Gardens’ (1) in which scientists are looking for Rhizobium bacteria in 1000 Flemish gardens. 

Earlier this year our garden was selected to participate in the science project to find out if soy can be grown in a sustainable way in Flanders. Last April we received our soy seeds and got to work as ‘citizen-scientists’: planting the soy beans and continued follow up, entering data on when the soy plants begin to germinate, when the flowering starts, measuring the length of the beans, the height of the plants and the colour of the leaves, … A sample of our soil was also taken for analysis. Beginning of August we brought in our first 5 soy plants for further research. 

The research

Today, Belgium imports about 800,000 tons of soybeans which are mainly processed as animal feed and thus not for human consumption. Moreover, 65% comes from high risk countries where cultivation is accompanied by deforestation. 

Soybeans, as member of the Leguminosae family are a protein rich crop. By crossbreeding, the researchers grew soybean varieties adapted to our colder climate. But, to yield beans with high protein levels, a specific bacteria must be sought. According to microbiologists, bacteria are everywhere and it is just a matter of looking for the right conditions. Hence the aim of the study to search in our gardens for the rhizobia bacteria. These bacteria will then be extracted in the lab, propagated and used in sustainable agriculture in our regions.

The purpose of the ‘Soy in 1000 Gardens’ research is: 

1. On the one hand, leguminous plants have a very high potential for sustainable agriculture because their natural input of nitrogen occurs through biological nitrogen fixation (eliminating the need for fertilizers). 
2. On the other hand, soy is very rich in protein which makes them a sustainable alternative for animal protein. This means that the food chain can be kept shorter by eating the plants directly and skipping the livestock part.

1. Sustainable agriculture

Plants (like any other living organisms) are made up of cells. The building material for these cells are proteins. Proteins do most of the work in cells including cell shape, production of fat and enzymes, routine maintenance and waste clean-up. In order to create proteins, as well as to create genetic material, cells need nitrogen. Nitrogen (N) is thus an essential element for life.

Plants will find nitrogen as ammonium and nitrate in the soil, for instance through organic material. However, the vast majority of nitrogen occurs as atmospheric nitrogen in the air and cannot be converted by plants or animals. Only the nitrogen-fixing bacteria are able to change atmospheric nitrogen into simple molecules (ammonium and nitrate) which plants in turn transform into proteins. 

Some crops in agriculture, like wheat and corn, require a lot of (nitrogen-rich) fertilizer to grow into protein-rich foods for humans. And even though nitrogen is essential, human activities creating excessive nitrogen through the use of fertilisers are disturbing natural processes: soil, surface and groundwater poisoning (acidification), disruption of nutrient cycles and loss of biodiversity.Now it gets interesting: plants from the Leguminosae family (soy, clover species, vetches, beans and legumes) have nodules on their root systems, which are formed by the nitrogen-fixing rhizobium bacteria. These bacteria are essential for fixing large reserves of atmospheric nitrogen for the plant. Thanks to this nitrogen fixation, the leguminous plants have an incredible advantage since they don’t depend on finding nitrogen in the soil and can therefore grow on nitrogen-poor soil.

2. Protein shift

Our diet places a heavy burden on the environment and on our own health due to an excessively high  consumption of animal products. Hence the second goal of the research: to improve the proportion between animal and vegetable protein sources.

Europe, too, put the challenges in the field of agriculture and food high on the policy agenda and wants to make its protein supply more sustainable as well as to reduce its dependence on imports. This is done under the ‘Farm to Fork strategy’ putting the EU on track to meet its climate targets by 2030 (to reduce emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990).

In order to better understand the impact of the livestock sector on the environment, we will share some key figures , which we gleaned from the documentary Cowspiracy (a must-watch, currently on Netflix):

To understand the food chain you need to know that on average a cow needs 70 kg of feed and up to 150 litres of water daily. With these numbers in mind it’s easy to understand that a lot of crops and water are making a detour through livestock before ending up on our plates. This also explains the figures below:

• Climate change: a plant-based diet reduces your carbon footprint by 50%
• Ocean acidification: the digestive system of ruminants produces methane (yes, farts!) and accounts for respectively 37% of all human-induced methane (86 times more destructive than CO2), and 64% of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain. The new United Nations climate report also draws attention to the role of methane in global warming: in the short term, reductions in methane emissions will make a big difference. 
• Ocean dead zones: Every second, 52.600kg of excrement are produced by animals raised for food in the US alone. This is enough to cover in one year all of San Francisco, New York City, Tokyo, Paris, New Delhi, Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Rio de Janeiro, Delaware, Bali, Costa Rica and Denmark combined. Manure from livestock operations on land created more than 500 nitrogen dead zones in the oceans comprising more than 240.000km² completely devoid of live.
• Biodiversity loss: Livestock farming is the main cause of species extinction: 110 animals and insect species become extinct every day due to rainforest clearing to be able to make space to grow food for livestock.
• Water footprint: If you have ever calculated your water footprint, you realised that most of the water goes to our food. Beef is the biggest culprit, because one steak (200g) requires no less than 4,000 litres of water. For 200 grams of poultry, 624 litres are needed. Cheese requires 100 litres and an egg 200 litres. 

Land use: Animal agriculture takes up 45% of earth’s total land area. Comparing land use for one year: a vegan uses the equivalent to 674m² of land, a vegetarian diet including eggs and dairy requires 3 times that amount of land (2.022m2), and feeding a person on a diet of meat, dairy and eggs requires 18 times more land area (12.132m2).

With these figures in mind, do we still believe that ‘overpopulation’ or  transportation are the cause of climate change? Or could part of the explanation lie in our consumption patterns and the way our food is produced? We believe it is time to agree on a solution to rethink the use of the earth to feed our current population. It does matter what we eat.

1. ‘Soja in 1000 tuinen’ is a research project of VIB (Flemish Institute for Biotechnology), ILVO (Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), Ghent University, and KU Leuven (Catholic research university in Leuven)

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References

1. MProf. Dr. Sofie Goormachtig (VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology) via https://sojain1000tuinen.sites.vib.be/nl
2. Kip Andersen, Keegan Kuhn, 26 juni 2014 (Los Angeles), Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret
3. https://omgeving.vlaanderen.be/wat-is-een-eiwitshift
4. Eten volgens de voedingsdriehoek: goed voor jezelf en de planeet Aanbevelingen en handelingsperspectieven voor een gezond en milieuverantwoord voedingspatroon (2021), Vlaams Instituut Gezond Leven