In response to your inquiry on the most popular means of producing the crop, it is a row crop with an annual growth habit which occupies many millions of acres each year.
Oil is one of the major components for which soybean is grown.
The investment needed to crush soybeans is very large. A new crusing facility is under construction presently about 60 miles from my location, and the cost of the facility is said to be 16 million dollars. Considering the cost of building a plant to crush soybeans, I suppose you could say the process is expensive but then the profit is considerable if you can process enough volume with the facility. You might contact Dr. Darrel Good at his Ask An Expert site to get some current ideas and information on profits and costs as he knows them to be associated with crushing soybeans. Gary Pepper Crop Sciences Dept.