Soybean production, integral to sustainable agriculture and reliant on imports, faces vulnerability to international risk factors impacting domestic food security. The 2021 Central Rural Work Conference advocated strategic adjustments for sustainable soybean production amidst resource constraints, trade conflicts, and the lingering impact of COVID-19. This study scrutinizes the developmental framework of China’s soybean industry within current domestic policies. This paper uses the soybean sown area and soybean production in each province of China from 1995 to 2020 to measure China’s soybean concentration, production layout, and comparative advantage of regional scale, to analyze in depth the overall situation of China’s soybean production as well as the differences between regions, and to pave the way for the subsequent soybean production forecast. Further, taking the domestic soybean supply and demand situation in China in 2020 as the base period, while considering the growth values of soybean production under different scenarios, the potential forecasting model is utilized to estimate China’s soybean production under different scenarios. The results show that, in terms of inter-annual variability, revealing an upward trajectory from 1995 to 2020, with a shift to major soybean producing areas, notably in the northeast and the Huanghe-Huaihe-Haihe area. From inter-provincial changes, Soybean production on the left and right sides of the “Hu-Huanyong line” has significant heterogeneity; specifically, east of the “Hu-Huanyong line,” soybean production advantages are more obvious. Additionally, the study considered the actual planting situation of soybeans and envisaged two scenarios of compound planting and strip planting. The soybean production range in 2030 is expected to be 20.73–22.32 million tons and 21.15–27.55 million tons, with self-sufficiency rates varying from 18.57 to 19.98% and 18.95 to 24.68%, respectively. The research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of China’s soybean industry and its potential trajectories, employing a model combining historical trends, policy analysis, and technological advancements. Results suggest a promising future with strategic adjustments in planting structures. Recommendations emphasize policymakers’ prioritization of technological investments and sustainable planting practices to achieve projected production targets. Policy interventions must address challenges tied to resource limitations, trade conflicts, and the ongoing COVID-19 effects, ensuring soybean industry resilience.

Sustainable green development, cost saving, and efficiency improvement have become the main theme of the high-quality development of China’s animal husbandry and the problem of overuse of feed should be paid more attention. Based on the 3-year input–output data of 169 beef cattle farmers, a trans-logarithmic stochastic frontier function was used to study the relationship between feed utilization efficiency and beef cattle breeding scale. The results showed that the average technical efficiency of feed utilization was 0.56, and the technical efficiency of feed utilization increased year by year. Simultaneously, it showed that Chinese beef cattle farmers pay more attention to feed utilization efficiency at this stage; the feed utilization efficiency of retail and medium-sized beef cattle farmers was in the best state in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, the feed utilization efficiency of small-scale beef cattle farmers was the best; the technical efficiency of beef cattle breeding will increase with the expansion of scale. The technical efficiency of beef cattle breeding will increase with the expansion of the scale, and the feed utilization efficiency of large-scale farmers is also better than that of retail farmers, and the scale of beef cattle breeding can bring better benefits. However, from the perspective of feed utilization efficiency, it is not the largest scale that represents the best efficiency, and from the perspective of breeding technology efficiency, the gap between various scales is gradually narrowing. This should also prove that under the condition of hard resource constraints, the large-scale development of beef cattle breeding is in line with the basic national conditions of China at this stage.