SoyTrace methodology

What SoyTrace does

For a crushing plant and the elevators it buys through, SoyTrace draws each facility’s sourcing area (its catchment) and maps the soybean fields inside it — field by field, with eight seasons of crop history, the client’s own compliant / non-compliant classification and the rail and river network around them. It maps and counts; it does not issue its own verdict on a field.

Sources

Every layer comes from a public dataset or from the client’s own delivery. SoyTrace keeps the source next to each figure (Data & method tab in the workspace).

Catchments

A catchment is a circle around a facility, with the radius the client uses for it.

• Radii follow the client’s buffers in the unit they were delivered in — nautical miles (1 NM = 1.852 km) or statute miles — and the workspace shows that unit.
• A field belongs to a catchment when its outline touches the circle.
• One field can sit in several catchments (the plant’s and an elevator’s, or two elevators’). Figures per catchment count it in each; combined figures count every field once.

Soybean fields and crop history

A soybean field is a CSB field classed as soybeans in the latest season (2025).

• Crop history: what each field grew in each season from 2018 to 2025, and in how many of those eight seasons it was in soybeans.
• Areas are the field’s own CSB area, in acres, with hectares alongside.
• Field statistics per catchment: count, soybean area, field sizes, states and top counties.

Compliant and non-compliant

Compliant / non-compliant is the client’s classification. SoyTrace shows it exactly as delivered and does not re-assess it.

• Non-compliant area is the whole area of each field on the client’s non-compliant list.
• A non-compliant field is counted in a catchment when its centre point falls inside it.
• Shares are by area unless a table says it counts fields. They can be very small; SoyTrace shows them with up to three decimals rather than rounding to 0% or 100%.

Rail and river

How much soybean area lies close to rail or barge transport, where hauling costs far less than by truck.

• Distance from each field to the nearest active rail line and to the major river system, in a straight line.
• Shown in bands of 5, 10 and 20 statute miles, for rail, river, and rail or river.
• Only fields in the states the rail and river data cover are counted; the workspace states the share of area this covers.

Units

Personal data

Where the client supplies a field’s owner, it is visible only inside that client’s workspace: hidden in presentation mode and left out of every download.