Source: AMNY

The emerging trade war with China has been downplayed since the numbers (potential dollars) at stake for the U.S. are rather small compared with other sectors of the economy. Although, one commodity that keeps surfacing in the news ("Politico Agriculture") is the fact that China is poised to purchase 5 million tons of soybeans from the United States:

China agreed to buy 5 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans after the two sides concluded the latest round of negotiations in Washington, though a “comprehensive” trade deal still has to be hammered out. Top U.S. negotiators are expected to visit China for another round of discussions in mid-February.

This reporting comes amidst a growing trade war emerging between China and the United States. As I wrote in a previous blog post, China has essentially closed doors on Soybean demand, which has driven up the storage of soybeans in the United States. Which ultimately means that Soybean farmers are going to unload a large amount of Soybeans onto the market. Products like Soymilk will come down in price? Possibly.

With that being said, after reading the article above, I could not help but thinking the following question:

How many gallons of Soy milk could be made with 5,000,000 tons of Soybeans?

How many Soy Lattes could be made with 5,000,000 tons of Soybeans?

In the paragraphs below, the analysis of determining the total amount of Soy milk and Soy Lattes which could be made with 5,000,000 tons of Soybean will be carried out using dimensional analysis.

How many Soybeans are in a gallon of Soy Milk?

The first question which needs to be answered is the total amount of Soy milk which can be made with a 5,000,000 tons of Soybean. Following the standard methodology employed by myself in previous blog posts, the following question is inserted into the Google search engine: How much soybean is required to make a gallon of soy milk? The answer to which is shown below:

If the first choice is selected from 'instructables.com' with the following recipe (with great pictures) which makes a total of 2 quarts + 2 pints of Soy milk shown below:

Source: Instructables.com

The above recipe is great for making Soy milk for the simple instructions which are accompanied by good pictures. Although, for the purpose of this blog post, the measurements of 2 quarts + 2 pints of Soy milk made with each batch calls for two separate unit conversions: 1) first, converting quarts to gallons and 2) converting pints to gallons.

For the sake of finding a conversion factor from weight of Soybeans to gallons produced, lets return to the Google search page shown above. The second hit on the Google page is shown below:

The second choice is titled "Blog: Laura Soybeans" which is from the Chambers Family Farms. The blog post titled "How much milk can I make?" give the following conversion factor shown below:

Source: Laura Soybeans

The conversion factor for which the search was for indicates that to make 1.8 gallons of Soy milk, a pound of Soybeans will be needed. With the conversion in hand, the next step is to convert 5,000,000 tons to pounds. Again, typing into Google the following question: How many pounds are in a ton? Yields the following answer shown below:

According to Google, there are 2000 pounds in a ton. To begin with, first a conversion is necessary from units of 'ton' to 'pound' as shown below:

The result indicates that 5,000,000 tons of soybeans is equivalent to 10 billion pounds. Using the conversion factor of 1.8 gallons of soymilk to a single pound of soybean, the total amount of soymilk which is possible from 5,000,000 tons of soybeans can be determined as shown below:

Wow. Converting 5,000,000 tons of Soybean to gallons of Soy milk would yield a total of 18,000,000,000 gallons -- 18 billion gallons. That is no small amount to be sending over to China in hopes of unloading the load at Port. What kind of monetary loss is associated with the rejection on China's part? How much money do the U.S. farmers lose if China rejects the equivalent of 18 billion gallons of Soy milk? Only time will tell.

The second question which was asked at the beginning was considering taking the total load of Soybeans (5,000,000 tons) and converting them to Soy Lattes coffee drinks at Starbuck's. How many could be made with 5,000,000 tons of Soybeans? The answer is in the analysis below.

How many Soy Latte's can be made?

In order to start the analysis of determining the number of Soy Latte's with 18,000,000,000 gallons of Soy milk, the amount of Soy milk needed for each drink needs to be known. Following the method of searching for a conversion factor above, type into Google the following question: How many ounces in a gallon of milk? The answer is shown below:

Why are we searching for 'ounces' when we have gallons? A drink commonly requires only small amounts (ounces) of milk not gallons. Therefore, to determine a conversion factor for the amount of Soy milk required in each drink type into Google: how much soy milk is required to make a soy latte at starbucks? The answer is shown below:

Click on the first link shown gives the following recipe shown below:

Source: WikiHow

Which calls for 6 ounces of Soy milk for a Soy Latte. That is the conversion factor which was needed to determine the number of Latte's in a given amount of milk. The total number of Soy Lattes which can be made with 18,000,000,000 gallons is shown below:

Oh my goodness. The calculation indicates that with 5,000,000 tons of Soybeans, a coffee maker could make a total of 384 billion Soy Lattes.

Conclusion...

As you may expect from the analysis above, the process of using dimensional analysis to shed light on enormous numbers (values) reported in the news is exciting and illuminating. Reading over statistics (numbers and values) is easily accomplished without thinking into the true dimension or magnitude of the statistic. Although, when the statistic is sent through and analysis such as that above, the statistic can take on a new meaning to the reader.

Imagine two large ships transporting that enormous amount of Soybeans across the seas in hope of selling them to China. To me, that is a giant bet. Especially, since in my previous blog post, I indicated that essentially China has shut their doors to the possibility of purchasing or accepting any Soybean shipments from the United States. I guess that the alternative is to lose the product altogether by storing enormous amounts in storage space meant for other crops throughout the season. Which would throw off the balance of agriculture. Regardless, the amount of Soybean impacted by the trade dispute has been shown (in the present analysis) to be no small amount. Hopefully a resolution is found soon for the agricultural sector's sake.

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