The North Coast of New South Wales has become Australia's largest soybean producing area, turning off some 25000 tonnes last season, almost half total national production.

Research agronomist Natalie Moore said that, apart from the cash value of the grain, soybean was also an integral component of many coastal farming systems. Soybeans were a beneficial break crop for sugar cane and integral to dryland winter cereal cropping and beef grazing enterprises on the coast.

The "Beef'n'Beans" system used a soybean phase to improve pastures by direct drilling into degraded or unimproved pastures.

Seed of pasture species or forage crops like oats were sown by air into the senescing soybean crop, germinating in the soybean stubble, making immediate use of nitrogen residues.