Edamame soybeans fetch a good price, but are costly to produce

Prices for this edible soybean beats the bejeebers out of the current market prices. Edamame soybeans retail in western Ontario grocery stores for $3.99 for 125 grams, in the pod. Elroy Cober, an Ottawa-based Agriculture Canada researcher, tested edamame soybeans in trials several years ago. The saleable pod yield was eight tonnes per hectare, “which I think is reasonable,” the scientist says.

“In the pod is the traditional way to have them,” Cober says. They are cooked for five to six minutes and sprinkled with coarse salt. Japanese consumers eat them with beer instead of peanuts.

Lest a current soybean grower get carried away with the thought of these returns, there is a caveat. Harvesting expenses are extraordinarily high for a soybean, Cober says. An edamame grower would employ vegetable harvesting equipment, either a green bean picker which takes the whole pod from the field or a green pea combine which shells out the seeds.

Either way, there are a lot of costs, Cober warns. If the beans are shelled they must be cooled and flash frozen. “You need to be in the frozen vegetable business,” Cober says.

Another way to grow them is to stagger plantings and then harvest the beans in the pod fresh, for what he refers to as “high-end markets.”

Better Farming found edamame soybeans supplied by the Benatone company in Toronto. This chain supplies mostly sushi, an ethnic Japanese raw fish product, to a range of supermarket chains. Cober sees shelled edamame soybeans where he shops in Ottawa. The in-pod soybeans sold in western Ontario are likely grown somewhere in Ontario or the eastern United States, Cober says.

He estimates their shelf life at less than a week. At a retail price of $3.99 for 125 grams, as in Zehrs, supermarket a kilogram of edamame soybeans retails for $31.92.

But Horst Bohner, an Ontario agriculture ministry soybean specialist, says the market is likely quite small for these soybeans. BF