Mr. and Mrs. Omnivore now embrace them as the beverage of choice, as evidenced by occasionally sold-out shelves plus statistics that show sudden growth in mainstream consumption of these beverages.

In Canada, soybeans - the prime ingredient for an increasing variety of foods and beverages - are grown mostly in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

According to Statistics Canada's Census of Agriculture, a national total of 1,202,098 hectares of farmland were used to produce soybean crops in 2006, compared with 153,793 hectares 30 years earlier.

Ontario remained the largest soybean producer in 2006 with 872,455 hectares of land used for this purpose. Quebec remained second, at 178,161 hectares, and Manitoba remained third, at 141,869 hectares. Hospitable climates are the reason for these concentrations of soybean cultivation.

"It's certainly a growing industry," Ontario Soybean Growers spokeswoman Jeanine Moyer of Guelph says of the ubiquitous soybean, for millennia a staple in Asian diets.

"Soy milk and soy foods hold a lot of potential."

John Michaelides, research and technology director at the Guelph Food Technology Centre, said soy beverage sales across Canada have grown by an average of 20 per cent a year since 2005. Sales in 2006 totalled $93 million, and in 2007 they totalled $104 million, Michaelides said. By 2010, sales will likely total $134 million, he predicted.

"The consumption of soy is going up in all categories."

Meanwhile, shifting demographics and consumer tastes have caused a consistent decline in per capita fluid milk consumption across Canada.

"The dairy products industry has been one of the slower-growing components of the food processing industry ... " says Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Canadian Dairy Industry Profile.

"Factors that might explain this industry stagnation include an aging population, growing consumer preference for low-fat foods and immigrants who consume fewer dairy products," the publication says. "Fluid milk producers have also experienced heavy competition from other beverages such as bottled waters, juices and soft drinks."

Quoting data from marketing information company ACNeilsen, Monica Treidlinger of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says dairy milk sales totalled $1.9 billion in 2006 compared with $1.84 billion the previous year. Meanwhile, soy drink sales increased to $105.1 million from $99.4 million - a considerably bigger rise.

The United States Department of Agriculture says in a November 2007 global agriculture information network (GAIN) report that Canada's per capita milk consumption - calculated by dividing annual fluid milk sales by the country's population - decreased slightly in 2006 to 82.92 litres from 83.37 litres per person the previous year.

"Canada's changing demographics and the availability of other calcium-fortified beverages such as soy beverages have reduced consumer demand for milk over the past 10 years," the GAIN report says. "Immigration is responsible for the population growth in Canada and milk drinking often is not part of new Canadians' cultural eating patterns.

"Conflicting health messages regarding the consumption of milk has also led to the increased popularity of new beverages such as soy beverages that compete with milk."

However, Canada's fluid milk industry is working hard to maintain and even increase its share of the market.

Robin Smith, executive director of the Burnaby, B.C.-based B.C. Dairy Foundation, disputes any suggestion that milk is on the ropes in the competition for beverage markets.

Statistics Canada figures that show per capita fluid milk consumption to be on the decline in B.C. are flawed, Smith said, due to the fact that they do not take into account packaged fluid milks that are imported into the province.

"Our milk sales have been increasing steadily by 21/2 to three per cent a year, which is considered pretty darned good," he said. "Soy is a small competitor. I look at soy more as a niche market.

"Water and soft drinks and juice are all major competitors for us."

Leonard Blocka, chair of the Saskatchewan Milk Control Board, predicted that soy beverage producers won't capture much of mainstream milk consumption beyond consumers who avoid dairy milk for health reasons, such as lactose intolerance.

"The general population knows the nutritional benefits of milk," Blocka said.

Smith said his B.C. organization - like its dairy counterparts in other provinces - continues to invest heavily in milk promotion. The B.C. Dairy Foundation has created award-winning multi-media advertising and has targeted schools and colleges with prize promotions. "We take direct aim at our competitors' products," he said.

In an October 2007 Statistics Canada article, analyst Eric Dorff says that soybeans - long ago treated as the barnyard menu of North America's hogs and chickens - did not become a commercial oilseed crop in Canada until a crushing plant was built in southern Ontario in the 1920s.

The article, The Soybean, Agriculture's Jack-of-all-Trades, notes that production began to skyrocket in the early 1940s, with 17,000 hectares of farmland used for this kind of crop in 1942 compared with 4,400 hectares reported in 1941.

In 2006, Dorff wrote, farm cash receipts from soybeans totalled $680 million across Canada, making soybeans the country's fifth most valuable crop behind canola ($2.5 billion), wheat ($1.8 billion excluding durum), potatoes ($899 million) and corn ($753 million). In Ontario, soybeans were by far the top crop in terms of farm cash receipts at more than half a billion dollars.

Soyfoods: The U.S. Market 2007, published by market research and consulting firms Soyatech, Inc. and SPINS, reveals similar soy vs. milk sales patterns in the U.S. Soy beverage sales increased to $892 million in 2006 from $832 million in 2005 and $550.4 million in 2001, the report says.

Meanwhile, the volume of milk produced, as measured by weight, increased by only 2.8 per cent in 2006 from 2005, according to the USDA's 2006 Dairy Market Statistics.

Three-quarters of U.S. soy beverage sales - once virtually the exclusive domain of health-food stores - are now sold through supermarkets, according to Mintel International Group Ltd.'s June 2006 Soy-based Food and Drink Report.

Nancy Chapman of Washington, D.C., executive director of Soyfoods Association of North America, says soybean producers have achieved a high degree of success with the development of a variety of flavours - some the traditional "grassy" flavour and others with a sweeter, more delicate flavour - to suit discriminating consumer palates.

"We are making inroads" into the U.S.'s dairy industry, she says.

(Brock Ketcham is an Edmonton-based writer who specializes in consumer and public policy issues. He can be reached at brock@businessedge.ca)