You can eat soybeans, though, which are seeing record production thanks to it supplanting what is affectionately known in agriculture circles as poverty grass.
Perhaps someone in the industry can chime in, but I had read that the soybeans that the US primarily grows and previously sold to China were used for pig feed. In my mind I pictured it like "cow corn" -- humans technically can eat it, but it's chewy and not very good.
Are there different grades of soybean?
There's some cosmic irony that this is happening when the people who came up with the derogatory term "soy boys" are in office, but I'm too depressed to laugh about it.