Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 92% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Haspel: Soy Yields Six Million Calories Per Acre, Tripling Other Legumes

Tamar Haspel · Should we eat bugs, farmed fish, or soy? · Sep 15, 2022 · at 47:34

Tamar Haspel evaluates crop productivity by comparing calories per acre across soy, corn, and alternative legumes.

0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 33.0s

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“So soy, here in the United States, we can grow about six million calories per acre, and that's less than half of what corn can do, because protein has a lot of plant overhead, so any protein-rich plant is going to generate fewer calories per acre than a crop that has less protein. But you compare soy at six Million calories per acre, to other kinds of legumes, dry beans, chickpeas, my beloved lentils are really only usually in the two million range”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

In the United States, soy yields approximately six million calories per acre, roughly triple the yield of other legumes like chickpeas, dry beans, and lentils which yield around two million calories per acre.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

According to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) yield records and USDA FoodData Central caloric density values, U.S. soybean yields (averaging 49.5 to 51.4 bushels or ~3,000 lbs per acre at 2,023 kcal/lb) generate approximately 6.07 to 6.24 million kcal per acre. By comparison, U.S. average yields for lentils (1.60 to 1.92 million kcal/acre) and chickpeas (1.89 to 2.40 million kcal/acre) hover closely around 2 million kcal per acre, with dry edible beans yielding approximately 2.67 to 3.14 million kcal per acre. This confirms that U.S. soy yields approximately six million calories per acre, roughly two to three times the caloric output of other common pulse crops.

USDA FoodData Central records soybean caloric density at 446 kcal/100g (~2,023 kcal/lb), lentils at ~1,600 kcal/lb, chickpeas at ~1,715 kcal/lb, and dry edible beans at ~1,570 kcal/lb.
USDA NASS crop yields (2020-2022) average ~3,000 lbs/acre for soybeans, yielding ~6.1 to 6.2 million kcal/acre.
USDA NASS pulse crop yields yield ~1.6-1.9 million kcal/acre for lentils, ~1.9-2.4 million kcal/acre for chickpeas, and ~2.7-3.1 million kcal/acre for dry edible beans, supporting the ~2 million calorie baseline.

Checked against

[1] recipal.com [2] myfooddata.com [3] triagemethod.com [4] hanademi.com [5] scribd.com [6] fibergoal.com [7] usda.gov [8] minnstarbank.com

"Chickpeas" "Yield per harvested acre" USDA 2021 2020 2019 pounds "soybeans" USDA NASS yield per acre 2021 2022 bushels "FoodData Central" "Chickpeas, mature seeds, raw" calories USDA FoodData Central soybeans mature seeds raw calories per 100g "FoodData Central" "Lentils, mature seeds, raw" OR "Beans, dry edible" calories USDA NASS chickpeas lentils yield per acre 2021 2022 pounds cwt "Dry Edible Beans" "Yield per harvested acre" USDA 2021 2020 2019 cwt OR pounds "FoodData Central" "Beans, dry, pinto" OR "Beans, pinto, mature seeds, raw" calories 100g USDA NASS dry edible beans yield per acre 2021 2022 pounds cwt

assessed as of 2026-09-02

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Mentioned

chickpeas corn lentils soy United States

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