The Ohio Soybean Council and the soybean checkoff, in partnership with the United Soybean Board, recently hosted the Ohio Soy 2020 forum, which brought together representatives from virtually every facet of Ohio's soybean industry.

Attendees were encouraged to look to the future and draw from the insights of the national Soy 2020 program.

The Ohio Soy 2020 Forum took some next-steps in moving Ohio towards an impressive national goal – to help the U.S. become a global market leader in the soybean industry by 2020. The event featured speakers who emphasized Ohio’s unique position in making this vision a reality and also engaged the attendees in a brainstorming session to help define both the Ohio bioproducts industry of the future and outline some of the steps required and the major players in the State.

After a strategic overview of the Ohio Soybean Council’s efforts related to bioproducts, featured speaker, State Senator Karen L. Gillmor spoke about S.B. 131, the BioPreferred Purchasing Program, which encourages the purchase of biobased products for state agencies and state universities when the products are comparable.

Cathy Horton, CEO of NuTek, LLC, a company that makes soy-based lubricants in Chagrin Falls, OH, discussed how she developed her company and the progress of her line of green lubricant products, under the LubFix brand. These products are manufactured in Ohio.

Another feature of the meeting was the Bioproducts Industry / Research Group Panel Discussion, which brought together bioproducts industry leaders from both the research/development and manufacturing sides of the business. Their focus was their vision for bioproducts in the future. Participants in this segment of the program were the Ohio BioProducts Innovation Center (OBIC), NuTek, Battelle, Univenture, and Mitsubishi Kagaku Imaging Corp.

These Forum activities were well in sync with Soy 2020, which is a national initiative that looks at different scenarios for the soybean industry to the year 2020. Ohio is the first state to bring this initiative to the State level to specifically analyze how Ohio's soybean industry could change over the next decade or so.

According to Soy 2020, by the date in the organization’s title, the world will have seen tremendous changes. The world population will most likely exceed 8 billion people, with more than 93 percent of growth taking place in developing countries. Continued population growth, combined with an increasing economic status in developing countries, will require a global effort to feed a hungry world and provide the energy to sustain global economic growth.

The national Soy 2020 organization has a vision: the U.S. soybean industry will be the global marketplace leader. The Soy 2020 process established strategies to optimize the U.S. soybean value chain regardless of what the future world unfolds. To fully realize the Vision, the U.S. soybean value-chain (producers and producer associations, input and output channels, and government entities) must fully embrace the vision and strategies, and personalize them as appropriate for implementation.

The national Soy 2020 organizational vision includes the following action items:

• Strive for economic sustainability and a global leadership position through the innovation, adoption and delivery of soy production and trait technologies.

• Create a wide variety of output choices for food, feed, fuel and other outputs,
  while increasing demand for soy by promoting benefits, such as, higher levels
  of health and nutrition.

• Take an environmentally responsible leadership role to ensure a secure, safe, sustainable and abundant global food supply to feed a hungry world.

• Enable success of all soybean sectors and prepare to work in a coordinated leadership capacity through any situation the future may hold for U.S. soy.

On more of a regional level, the primary objective of Ohio's Soy 2020 initiative is to provide strategies for all segments of the Ohio soybean industry to have a winning strategy within an increasingly global and continuously changing environment, including:

• Keep Ohio's soybean industry moving forward.
• Maintain a thriving industry at a local (Ohio) and national level.
• Map a plan for the future.

New opportunities and challenges are arising through unprecedented growth of the U.S. food, agriculture, and renewable energy industries. The Ohio soybean industry is in an unique position to leverage its strengths to position itself for a thriving future in feeding the world's need for soy products.