Not just China, Indonesia loves US soybeans too as tempeh popularity booms

As demand for America’s top agricultural export rebounds in China amid the trade conflict, Indonesia has also increasingly become an important market

US soybeans are especially favoured by producers of tempeh, an Indonesian soybean cake that’s seeing a rise in global demand as a meat alternative

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Fried tempeh at the Mayasari Indonesian Grill. Photo: Handout

Published: 10:00pm, 13 Sep 2020Updated: 10:13am, 2 Apr 2021

At a farm in Greensburg, a town of 15,000 in the US state of Indiana, Indonesian-born Mayasari Effendi has been producing some 150 packets of tempeh – the Indonesian traditional fermented soybean cake – every week for the past five years.

A rise in health consciousness and home cooking during the Covid-19 pandemic boosted demand for her tempeh, which is sold in packets of about 230 grams each, and the 49-year-old now plans to set up a factory that can produce 1.6 million packets a week.

Mayasari – whose husband’s family also rears pigs and grows corn on the 600-hectare farm (roughly the size of 860 soccer pitches) – intends to distribute tempeh to retailers across the United States and export it to South Korea, Suriname and various African countries in the future.

But that is not all. The naturalised US citizen is involved in efforts between the Indonesian government and Indiana farmers to boost the state’s exports of soybeans to Indonesia, and raise the profile of tempeh as demand for plant-based meat booms.

Mayasari Effendi sells about 100 to 150 packets of tempeh in Indiana a week. Photo: Facebook

Indonesia requires 2.5 million tonnes of soybeans annually for its population of 270 million. But it produces only about 12.8 per cent of what it needs and, on average, has been importing US$1.1 billion worth of American soybeans annually for the past five years. About 94 per cent of Indonesian soybean imports last year was from the US, according to the government’s statistics agency.

“The technology used for large-scale farming of soybeans in the US is more advanced because they have been exploring ways to cultivate and market soybeans on a larger scale for more than 100 years,” Mayasari said.