Polish Processor Chief: Growing Soy on Weaker Soils Can Pay Off, but Carries Risk
At a soybean seminar in Buguchwała, Marek Tański, head of Poland's Agrolok, said soy can improve crop rotation with rapeseed, but on weaker soils yields depend largely on rainfall distribution. He also discussed profitability and how to secure a better price.
Dr. Marek Tański, president of the Polish agribusiness company Agrolok, explained at a soybean seminar in Buguchwała on 14 October 2026 under what conditions soy can be grown even on weaker soils and what that means for farms. Soy can improve crop rotation where rapeseed returns to the same field too often, and can supply raw material to processors. For farms, however, the decisive questions are field choice, yield stability and financial result.
Will soy replace some rapeseed?
Tański believes soy has a place on farms where rapeseed comes back too frequently. As a spring crop, it changes the sequence of crops in the rotation and may help limit the resistance of some weeds and certain diseases. Soy also supplies two sought-after raw materials: protein and oil. By his forecast, the current 100,000 hectares could grow roughly fivefold, but over more than a decade rather than a few years. He stressed it is only a forecast, not an announcement of rapid growth.
Weaker soils and weather
The seminar recommended soil of at least class IVb, preferably better. Tański does not dispute this, but argues weaker fields should not be written off without considering the conditions of the particular season. On class V and VI soils cultivation is difficult, though good yields do occur there in favorable years. He cautions against drawing conclusions from a single good year. The distribution of rainfall matters more than its amount, he said, and soil quality itself matters less.
The year 2024 was fairly good for soy in most Polish regions, but in the southeast soy on weaker sites did not yield satisfactorily. A similar result on a weaker field is not guaranteed with a different rainfall pattern.
Unfavorable weather can also hamper the formation of root nodules, reducing the benefit of soy's cooperation with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. That may call for higher spending, for example on fertilization, but this is not a universal rule: a farmer must judge whether the yield that can be saved justifies the cost.
Income and processing
The seminar indicated that a yield of 3 t/ha can bring stable income. Tański assesses that soy's production costs are lower than rapeseed's. The final result still depends on the harvested volume, the farm's costs and the terms of sale.
According to figures he cited, Poland imports about 3 million tonnes of soybean meal a year. Agrolok's plant-protein processing facility (ZUBR) has a capacity of 300,000 tonnes, and domestic raw material is currently insufficient even for this one plant. If the market grows, he does not rule out building another.
Tański argues Polish soy should not compete solely as the cheapest feed ingredient, but on quality, feed freshness and the origin of conventional soy grown in Poland and the EU. He also mentioned feed for which a buyer might pay 100 zloty per tonne more, but described this as a direction for market development, not a promise of a premium for every grower.
