U.S. Soy quality gives feed mills a competitive edge

24 June 2026

5 minute read

By: Sarah Mikesell

North America

Thomas D’Alfonso, Ph.D., Worldwide Animal Nutrition Focus Area Director at the U.S. Soybean Export Council, recently spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell about how U.S. Soy quality builds markets around the globe.

Tom, when producers and feed mills choose their soybean meal origin, what are they usually focused on and what do you think they're missing? 

In a commodity industry, price is often what's looked at first. However, what's important to look at is the cost – and there’s a distinction between price and cost. If you look at the ability of an ingredient to lower the cost of feed, that's different from looking at the numerical price of the ingredient. 

So, price is one factor, but the nutrient bundle and the consistency and the digestibility of those nutrients are what's most important. Consistency means you can formulate without using safety margins, so expect those average values to be available to the animal. 

The other cost to look at is cost per kilogram of animal protein produced. When you have a highly digestible diet where soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy is the base ingredient, those animals will perform to their genetic potential. They'll be more resilient to digestive and respiratory ailments. So, price is only one factor.  

The other part they are focused on, unfortunately, is crude protein. However, it's no longer the right way to formulate pig diets. Our methods for measuring crude protein are more than 100 years old, and we don’t really measure crude protein – we measure nitrogen. This method to formulate diets is simply inaccurate. 

It's much more important to look at essential amino acid and their digestibility. In fact, if you were to add up all the amino acids, you'd get a higher number than crude protein in many cases. 

In a previous field visit, we measured crude protein from two different samples. One had lower crude protein than the other. However, when we measured the amino acids and added them up, the one that measured lower in crude protein actually had more amino acids. So, measuring the right thing, essential amino acids in this case, and making the right purchasing decisions go hand in hand. 

U.S. Soy is often described as consistent, but what does that actually mean in practical terms for a nutritionist formulating a grow-finish diet? 

You're counting on those essential amino acids and calories to be digestible and for feed nutrients to be consistent. If they're not consistent, then you may be over-formulating or under-formulating nutrients. You're not properly balancing the diet, and the animal will not perform to its genetic potential. 

Today's animal genetics will bring higher profitability when they're provided with the right fuel. That means having a diet that is based on soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy at high inclusion rates to bring in those functional compounds that affect animal health and performance, as well as that nutrient bundle that you're expecting when you formulate the diet. 

Beyond protein, soybean meal contains bioactive compounds – polyphenols, isoflavones and bioactive peptides. What role do they play in grow-finish diets and performance?  Why does origin matter for these compounds? 

Origin matters for a number of reasons. What we know is that soybeans grown in the U.S. are less damaged. They have better quality essential amino acids with higher digestibility. Those are things that we as nutritionists are familiar with formulating.

The other compounds – isoflavones, bioactive peptides, polyphenols, terpenoids, bioactive lipids – all need to be at high quality and can also be affected by damage. 

Let's take the bioactive lipids, for example their essential fat quality is important. It affects animal digestive health, immune response and inflammation. These compounds make the digestive and immune systems more efficient and resilient, which means the animal has a healthy gastrointestinal system that will digest nutrients and bring the highest value. 

We've really just discovered these bioactive compounds in the last few years and are learning about their role in swine health and performance. There's some very exciting research out there, and I encourage everyone to go and look for it. 

For a feed mill owner expanding into a new market, trying to earn the trust of producers who are skeptical and cost conscious, how does ingredient origin become part of the commercial strategy? 

Ingredient origin is a good commercial strategy. It's important to provide high quality products to your customers and to ask them to look at animal performance as the indicator that they are getting consistently high-quality products. This builds trust. 

This is especially important when it comes to an industry that is often cost-conscious. They may look at the price of the feed or the price of an ingredient, but what's really critical is to look at the overall value and the return on investment for every ingredient decision that you make. 

By having highly digestible essential amino acids and calories, you can lower the cost of feed, and you can improve animal performance at the same time. 

Revenue and cost are the two factors in the profit equation. Look at those factors that improve revenue as well as reduce cost, and you'll see that adopting a preference for soybean meal made from U.S. Soy brings payback and contributes to overall profitability. 

What's your message to a nutritionist or procurement manager who is currently sourcing on price alone and hasn't done a rigorous origin comparison? Where should they start? 

It's up to USSEC to bring purchasers and nutritionists together in the buying process conversation. We can tell the nutritionist and the animal production company that purchasing soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy will lower their carbon footprint and provide more consistent feed and animal performance, but if we don't tie together the economic benefit to the company, then the purchaser may not pick up on it. 

We don't expect the purchaser to be an expert in sustainability or an expert in animal nutrition. It really requires a conversation among all the players involved in the purchasing decision. That's where we have engaged in many of our conversations – bringing the purchasing person and nutritionists together and bringing our supply chain partners together. It’s about having a conversation together about quality throughout the entire supply chain and why that brings payback to animal producers.