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Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

IndustryNAICS 11111Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting

Soybean Farming in the United States (NAICS 11111)

An investor's primer. Under the 2022 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), the five-digit industry 11111 — Soybean Farming — covers U.S. establishments primarily engaged in growing soybeans and/or producing soybean seed. This is a rollup page: NAICS 11111 contains exactly one child industry and is effectively identical to it. For the full deep-dive, read the child primer, Soybean Farming (NAICS 111110). Written for both public-market and private investors; tickers, expense ratios, and market values are held back until Sections 4 and 10.

1. Overview

Soybeans are one of the two crops — corn is the other — that anchor U.S. row-crop agriculture. In 2024 the U.S. soybean crop was worth about $44.1 billion at the farm gate, making it the country's second-most-valuable field crop after corn [1]. Roughly 271,000 farms grow soybeans, almost all family-owned operations spread across the Midwest and the Mississippi Delta [2].

Why an investor should care: soybeans are a global commodity whose price is set on world markets, so the industry is a leveraged bet on a handful of forces — Chinese import demand, the U.S. biofuel mandate, Brazilian competition, and weather. But the industry is unusual in one respect: there is essentially no way to buy "a soybean farm" on a stock exchange. Production is overwhelmingly private, held by families, partnerships, and private farm corporations. Public exposure comes indirectly, through the input suppliers, processors, merchants, and farmland landlords that surround the farm.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

In the NAICS hierarchy, the five-digit industry 11111 (Soybean Farming) sits directly above a single six-digit national industry, 111110 (Soybean Farming). There is a one-to-one mapping: everything classified under 11111 is also classified under 111110, and vice versa. NAICS creates this kind of single-child pass-through whenever the United States did not need to subdivide an industry any further than the international NAICS structure already does — there is only one meaningful category of soybean farm, so no split was warranted.

Practical consequence for investors: the scope, economics, demand drivers, regulation, competitive structure, and risks of 11111 are identical to those of 111110. This page gives the rollup figures and the map; for full detail — the value-chain breakdown, the complete investable-universe table, crush and biofuel economics, the farm safety net, and the near-term outlook — read the child primer, NAICS 111110.

Scope in one line. NAICS 11111 is the farming of soybeans — planting, growing, and harvesting the bean, plus growing soybean seed [6]. It excludes the crush plants that turn beans into meal and oil (those sit in manufacturing, NAICS 311224), the grain elevators and merchants that handle the crop (424510), and farm-support services — all covered in the child primer [6].

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Ingested federal stats for this level: our ground-truth statistics file for NAICS 11111 contains no ingested metrics — no revenue, establishment, employment, payroll, or profit figure. That is stated honestly here; the figures below are drawn from the same cited USDA sources used in the child primer, and because 11111 equals 111110 the two levels share identical numbers.

Because soybean growing is agricultural production, it sits largely outside the standard federal business statistics. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns and Economic Census exclude crop and animal production (NAICS 111–112), so there is no official establishment/employment/payroll series for soybean farms. The authoritative headcount comes from the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Census of Agriculture, and the size measures come from USDA's crop reports.

Structural snapshot (2022 Census of Agriculture) [7]:

  • 270,851 farms harvested soybeans, on 84.6 million harvested acres, producing 4.076 billion bushels.
  • The soybean-farm count is down more than 30,000 from 2017 — the industry is consolidating [2].
  • Average harvested acreage ~312 acres per soybean farm, up from 114 acres in 1978 [2].

Most recent crop year (2024) [4][1]:

  • Production 4.37 billion bushels, up 5% from 2023, on 86.1 million harvested acres at an average yield of 50.7 bushels per acre.
  • Value of production $44.1 billion — second among field crops behind corn.
  • Top states: Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana alone account for more than 37% of U.S. production [2].

One eligibility figure we do have from the federal source set: the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard for soybean farming is $2.25 million in average annual receipts — the ceiling below which a farm counts as a "small business" for federal programs (2023) [3]. Nearly every U.S. soybean farm falls under it, which tells you how the industry is structured: many operators, few giants.

Undercount caveat. The Census of Agriculture is thorough, but the business-statistics view simply doesn't cover farms: Census Nonemployer Statistics exclude crop production [10], and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages excludes proprietors and most self-employed farm operators, capturing only about half of U.S. agricultural employment [11]. Because ownership is overwhelmingly small and individual — sole proprietorships, family partnerships, and family LLCs — any registry-based headcount will understate the industry. On top of that, NAICS 111110/11111 captures only a slice of soybean acreage, because a farm is coded to a single industry by its primary commodity and most soybeans are grown in rotation with corn. Read soybean scale off USDA crop and census data, not off business registries.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

There are no pure-play publicly traded U.S. soybean farming companies. Production is private. Value in the public market concentrates in the ecosystem around the farm, and because 11111 has a single child, the concentration map is identical to that in the 111110 primer, where the full company/fund table lives. In brief:

  • Processors / merchants — Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), Bunge Global (BG); the privately held Cargill and Louis Dreyfus complete the "ABCD" trader group — capture the crush margin between bean cost and meal/oil value [20][21].
  • Input suppliers — Corteva (CTVA) seed and crop protection, Nutrien (NTR) fertilizer, Deere (DE) and AGCO equipment — sell into planted acres regardless of the bean price [22][23][24][26].
  • Farmland REITs (real-estate investment trusts) — Farmland Partners (FPI), Gladstone Land (LAND) — offer a liquid claim on farmland rents and appreciation [25][26].
  • Commodity / exchange / fund routes — Teucrium Soybean Fund (SOYB), VanEck Agribusiness ETF (MOO), and CME Group (CME) [27][28].

The primary owners of soybean-producing land remain farm families, partnerships, and private farm corporations — not these value-chain firms.

5. How the money works

A soybean operation's revenue is simple arithmetic: yield (bushels per acre) × price (per bushel) × acres, plus quality premiums and two government-linked layers — commodity-program payments and crop-insurance indemnities. The economics are those of a thin-margin, price-taking commodity producer: growers cannot set price (it is set on the Chicago Board of Trade and adjusted by local basis), so the levers are cost control, yield, and scale.

The 2025 total cost of production ran roughly $662 per acre, dominated by land and machinery [12], while the realized farm-gate price averaged around $10 per bushel for the 2024 crop [1] — leaving many operations near or below breakeven. A federal safety net (subsidized crop insurance plus the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs) cushions the cycle. Processors earn a crush margin that can actually widen when farm-gate prices are weak. The full cost stack, the three ways to read the return, and the safety-net mechanics are laid out in the child primer.

6. Demand drivers

U.S. soybean demand splits three ways [2]:

  1. Exports — historically about half the crop, overwhelmingly to China, which bought roughly $12.6 billion of the $24.5 billion in 2024 U.S. soybean exports [16]. This is the single biggest external swing factor, and it has become unreliable.
  2. Domestic crush → soybean meal — the dominant high-protein animal feed; steady, tracking poultry, hog, and dairy output [2].
  3. Domestic crush → soybean oil → biofuel — the fastest-growing driver. About half of U.S. soybean oil now goes into biodiesel and renewable diesel [17], and federal mandates are pulling more in.

The defining tension: rising domestic biofuel demand against a structurally weaker export franchise. See the child primer for the full breakdown.

7. Regulation

Soybean farming is shaped less by industry-specific rules than by four federal policy areas, all detailed in the 111110 primer:

  • Farm policy — the Farm Bill's commodity programs (ARC/PLC), federal crop insurance, and conservation programs [30].
  • Biofuel and tax policy — the Environmental Protection Agency's Renewable Fuel Standard and the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit drive soybean-oil demand [27][14].
  • Trade policy — because China is the marginal buyer, tariffs and trade agreements move prices as much as any farm rule [15][16].
  • Environmental, input, and biotech regulation — EPA pesticide rules, USDA/EPA/FDA oversight of genetically engineered seed, and the USDA National Organic Program [29][28][30].

8. Consolidation

At the farm level, competition is atomistic but consolidating — the 30,000-plus drop in soybean farms between 2017 and 2022, alongside rising acres per farm, is that consolidation in the data [2]. Globally, the competition is Brazil, which has overtaken the U.S. as the largest exporter and supplied around 93% of China's imports in 2025 [16]. Up and down the chain, the middlemen are concentrated — a handful of ABCD traders dominate crushing, storage, and export logistics, and seed/chemical and machinery suppliers are similarly concentrated. The result is a barbell: many fragmented producers at the farm gate, a few large firms controlling infrastructure and market access beyond it. Full treatment in the child primer.

9. Risks

The risk profile is identical to 111110's see child primer: price cyclicality (a global price the farmer can't control) [13]; trade / China concentration (in 2025 China bought essentially zero U.S. soybeans for months) [15]; South American competition [16]; weather and biology; sticky input and financing costs [12]; logistics and basis; policy dependence on the farm safety net and biofuel mandates [13][14]; interest rates and land values; and the opacity of private merchant and cooperative counterparties.

10. How to invest & outlook

Because 11111 equals 111110, the investment routes are the same — covered in full in the child primer:

  • Public (indirect): processors/merchants (ADM, BG), input suppliers (CTVA, NTR, DE, AGCO), farmland REITs (FPI, LAND), and commodity/fund routes (SOYB, MOO, CME) [20]-[28].
  • Private (direct): own farmland and rent it for a cash-rent yield plus appreciation; operate a farm for the full residual return; or invest through farmland funds, grain-storage and crushing infrastructure, and specialty/precision-ag businesses.

Near-term outlook. USDA forecasts 2026/27 U.S. production of 4.5 billion bushels from 85.4 million planted acres at a season-average price of $11.40 per bushel [19] — a forecast, not a result. The bull case rests on biofuel; the bear case is China and Brazil. For general investors, diversified value-chain exposure is usually more practical than trying to buy a pure U.S. soybean-farm business. For the complete outlook and editorial judgment, read the child primer, NAICS 111110.

Sources

Drawn from the child primer (NAICS 111110); numbering preserved for cross-reference.

  1. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Crop Values 2024 Summary, Feb. 2025 ($44.1B value; ~$10/bu realized 2024). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cpvl0225.pdf
  2. USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), Soybeans and Oil Crops — Oil Crops Sector at a Glance, 2025 (270,851 soybean farms; 312 acres/farm; export share; crush split; top states; consolidation). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/soybeans-and-oil-crops/oil-crops-sector-at-a-glance
  3. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 111110 = $2.25M receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
  4. USDA NASS, Crop Production 2024 Summary (4.37B bushels; 50.7 bu/acre; 86.1M harvested acres), Jan. 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/printable/2025/2025_Jan_10_Crop_Production_News_Release.pdf
  5. USDA ERS, Corn, soybeans accounted for 46 percent of U.S. crop cash receipts in 2024, 2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery
  6. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Manual (definition of 111110/11111 and adjacent-code exclusions). https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
  7. USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture (270,851 farms; 84.6M harvested acres; 4.076B bushels). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/
  8. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics (excludes crop production), 2025. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics.html
  9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW Questions and Answers (excludes proprietors; ~half of ag employment), 2025. https://www.bls.gov/cew/questions-and-answers.htm
  10. Purdue University Center for Commercial Agriculture, 2025 Purdue Crop Cost and Return Guide (~$662/acre; cost breakdown), 2025. https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/paer-article/2025-purdue-crop-cost-and-return-guide/
  11. American Soybean Association, The Rising Cost Squeeze: Soybean Farmers Face a Third Year of Losses, 2025. https://soygrowers.com/news-releases/the-rising-cost-squeeze-soybean-farmers-face-a-third-year-of-losses/
  12. American Farm Bureau Federation, One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Agricultural Provisions / 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit, 2025. https://www.fb.org/market-intel/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-final-agricultural-provisions
  13. CNBC, China buys US soybeans, falling short of trade agreement goal, Dec. 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/09/china-buys-us-soybeans-trump-trade-agreement.html
  14. Investigate Midwest, Soybeans have been a top US ag export for decades — what happens when the top buyer stops buying?, Dec. 2025 (2024 export value $24.5B; China $12.6B; Brazil ~93% of China imports). https://investigatemidwest.org/2025/12/15/soybeans-have-been-a-top-us-ag-export-for-decades-what-happens-when-the-top-buyer-stops-buying/
  15. Terrain (Farm Credit), Renewable Diesel: The Soybean Crush Engine (crush capacity growth; ~50% of soy oil to biofuel; RFS 2026), 2025. https://www.terrainag.com/insights/renewable-diesel-the-soybean-crush-engine/
  16. USDA ERS, Soybeans and Oil Crops: Market Outlook (2026/27: 4.5B bu; 85.4M planted acres; $11.40/bu), 2026. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/soybeans-and-oil-crops/market-outlook
  17. Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/7084/000000708426000011/adm-20251231.htm
  18. Bunge Global, 2025 Annual Report (Viterra combination). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1996862/000162828026024590/annualreport_bg-12312025x.htm
  19. Corteva, Fourth-Quarter 2025 Earnings Release. https://www.corteva.com
  20. Deere & Company, 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315189/000110465925122321/de-20251102x10k.htm
  21. AGCO Corp., 2025 Annual Report. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/880266/000088026626000027/agco2025annualreport_ars.htm
  22. Farmland Partners, 2025 Form 10-K (farmland REIT; ~125,200 acres; ~90% row-crop). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1591670/000110465926017533/fpi-20251231x10k.htm
  23. The Motley Fool, Best Agriculture Stocks / Best Farmland REITs, 2026. https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/consumer-staples/agriculture-stocks/
  24. Teucrium, SOYB Soybean Fund / ETF.com & VanEck, MOO Agribusiness ETF. https://teucrium.com/soyb
  25. CME Group, Soybean Futures Contract Specifications, 2026. https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/agriculture/oilseeds/soybean.contractSpecs.html
  26. USDA ERS, Farm and Commodity Policy / Commodity Costs and Returns: Documentation, 2026. https://ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-commodity-policy
  27. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Final Renewable Fuel Standards for 2026 and 2027, 2026. https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard/final-renewable-fuel-standards-2026-and-2027
  28. USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Biotechnology Regulations, 2025. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/biotechnology/regulations
  29. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Regulatory and Guidance Information for Pesticides, 2026. https://www.epa.gov/regulatory-information-topic/regulatory-and-guidance-information-topic-pesticides
  30. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Organic Standards / National Organic Program, 2026. https://www.ams.usda.gov/content/organic-standards