Although the soybean is everywhere it's invisible, embedded in livestock and poultry products. Most of the world harvest ends up in such products as milk, eggs, cheese, chicken, ham, beef, and ice cream.
Meat eating has risen very fast during our life time on global scale.
Of course its because of population growth but also because our eating habits have changed. Daily meat eating has not been common in western society before our generation. It has largely been more like weekend habit.
It's easy to see why it has not been possible before the oil-age.
Would a village feed 10kg's of protein to get 1kg in exchange?
Not if they didn't have oil to run the machines.
It has not been daily habit in asian societies either and now its spreading just like the western way of oil consumerism in general.
Pork need to eat about ten times the bean protein so they can grow 1 kg meat protein.
That equals about 10kg's of soybeans to produce 1kg pork meat.
Meat industry's carbon dioxide emissions are about 18% of total world emissions. The methane emissions are harder to estimate but you can only guess.
What I find funny is that meat eating seems to be some kind of manly-man-ego habit for some.
Killing a cow doesn't sound very macho to me. And sausage? Gimme a break..
Personally I have been vegetarian for about 12 years and the arguments about beans based diet not giving enough nutrients is ridiculous.
Spices and cooking skills are what makes bean foods taste great.
I eat soybean foods maybe once in two months. I prefer adzuki ,kidney,and black eye beans.
from this link you can find table with meat consumption numbers kg per person per year
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1626