Versatile and cheap: a global history of soy in the first half of the twentieth century

Abstract

This article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.

‘Made in Hong Kong’: Deriving value from the place-of-origin label, 1950s and now

“…By the early twentieth century, soybeans were being widely cultivated across East Asia, with those from northeast China considered to be of the best quality (TNA FO371 9221). In Hong Kong, however, soybean products were not popular with consumers despite being hailed as the answer to China's nutritional and developmental problems by Chinese elites and Western medical professionals alike (Prodöhl 2013). In his report on 'Nutrition in Hong Kong' in 1939, the colonial governor spoke of the initial unpopularity of soybean products: 'the Southern Chinese are rather inclined to look down upon [the] soya bean as a food for pigs' (TNA CO859/33/2).…”

From railroad imperialism to neoliberal reprimarization: Lessons from regime-shifts in the Global Soybean Complex

“…The most radical transformation began in the US in the late 1920s, when soybeans were increasingly cultivated for oil and meal, rather than for hay or soil improvement as they had previously been. The US government encouraged soy cultivation over other crops under the New Deal when earnings from cotton and maize had stagnated due to oversupply and financed further botanical research expeditions to acquire material for public plant breeding operations (Prodöhl, 2013; Roth, 2018). The use of novel hybridization techniques greatly improved yields, producing the dominant “Lincoln” cultivar in the Midwest and the “Lee” cultivar in the South (Vieira and Chen, 2021).…”

“…The soybean further became a focus of attention for the Chemurgy movement, a political force in the US that sought to replace raw material imports by using domestically available biomass sources and gained government support in the form of financing for research on soybean applications in the face of wartime shortages in tropical oils (Finlay, 2004). In the 1940s, soybean oil was increasingly used for margarine, as there was a shortage of butter (Prodöhl, 2013). Soybeans thus became crucial in the American wartime economy by providing farmers with a new source of income.…”

“…Marketing soybean cake and flour remained difficult, despite considerable advances in promoting their use in human nutrition. This forced the US government to buy up much of the supply (Prodöhl, 2013). Thus, after WW2, the US faced the problem of overproduction of soybeans, particularly an oversupply of soybean cake (Langthaler, 2020).…”