Episode summary
Soy looks different depending on where you sit. For Ryan Britt, who's farming soy, corn, wheat and cattle on over 2,000 hectares in North Central Missouri, it's the crop that reliably pays the bills. In 2025, Ryan found himself squarely in the middle of a global trade story he had very little control over. We talk about what he can control on the farm — cover cropping, no-till, rotations — and why he still advocates for farmers even though he'd rather be on a tractor.
Register for TABLE's webinar on April 16: Latin America's Soy Frontier: Is Bolivia the Next Brazil?
About Ryan Britt
Ryan Britt is a fifth generation farmer at Britt Farms in Randolph County, north central Missouri, where his family has farmed since 1865. Alongside his father, he raises corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, and cow-calf to finished beef across more than 2,000 hectares, using regenerative practices including nearly twenty years of no-till farming and over a decade of cover cropping. Ryan serves on numerous boards including the Randolph County Soil and Water Conservation District, and the National Association of Conservation Districts.
About TABLE's soy project
A Kamprad Foundation project at SLU, “Rethinking the global soy dilemma” is a multi-continent research and communication project that uses soy as an entry point into some of the most urgent challenges facing today’s food systems. Highly productive, protein-dense, and deeply embedded in global trade, soy has become foundational to how the world meets rising demand for food and feed. Yet its expansion is tightly bound up with environmental degradation and geopolitical tension—making soy an unusually revealing crop through which to examine how food systems are designed, governed, and contested. Read more here.
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