Soybeans

SOYBEANS

SOYBEANS. Native to China, the soybean (Glycine max ) is a legume, like the peanut, and it yields high-quality protein and edible oils. The soybean is the basis of an astonishing range of food items and industrial products. It is the number-one United States crop export and ranks second only to corn as a cash crop. Since the 1950s the United States has been the world's leading soybean producer.

The first documented appearance of the soybean in America was in 1765, when Samuel Bowen, an employee of the East India Company, sent beans acquired in China to the colony of Georgia. Bowen had soybeans planted for several years at his plantation in Thunderbolt. In 1770 Benjamin Franklin sent soybeans from London to botanist John Bartram. James Mease wrote that the soybean grew well in Pennsylvania's climate in 1804. As the nineteenth century progressed, ships plying the China trade dumped the soybeans used as cheap ballast in many United States ports. By the 1850s, the soybean had spread to horticulturalists from Canada to Texas.

Most American farmers discovered the soybean after Japan was opened to western trade in 1854. Japanese soybeans came to the attention of the U.S. government, which distributed them throughout the country to be evaluated as a forage crop. From the 1880s through the end of the century, virtually every agricultural station was testing the soybean. In 1904, the Tuskegee Institute scientist George Washington Carver demonstrated that soybeans provided valuable protein and oil (as he did also with the peanut). By developing new uses for the soybean and promoting its benefit in crop rotation, Carver helped revolutionize agricultural practices in southern states dangerously dependent on cotton.

At this time, only eight soybean cultivars were being grown. Between 1918 and 1931 the Department of Agriculture mounted expeditions to Asia to seek additional varieties. As new cultivars became available and soy processing plants were being built (the first in Decatur, Illinois, in 1922), soybean farming shifted its concentration from the southeastern states to the Midwest. As of the early 2000s, this region was generating more than 70 percent of all United States soybeans, with Illinois and Iowa the leading producers.

Early in the twentieth century most soybeans were grown for forage; however, some notable pioneers were experimenting with the bean's versatility. John Harvey Kellogg, of breakfast cereal fame, made the first soy milk and soy-based meat substitutes in the 1920s. In the 1930s automaker Henry Ford had his chemists create an auto body enamel from soybean oil and made soy meal into a plastic he used to manufacture more than twenty automobile parts.

World War II gave a significant boost to soybean production. Prior to this period, the United States imported 40 percent of its edible fats and oils. When war cut off the supply, the soybean helped make up the deficit. The real boom came in the 1950s with an unprecedented demand for low-cost, high-protein soy meal as an ingredient for livestock feed. This market constitutes more than 90 percent of all soybean use.

The total United States soybean-producing farmland was 1.8 million acres in 1924. By 1975 it had grown to 54.6 million, and the year 2000 set a record with 74.5 million acres planted. Farmers enjoyed a rise in soybean prices from the mid-1970s to a high of $7.75 per bushel in 1983. Prices then declined, with a sharp drop in 1998. In 2000 farmers were paid only $4.40, the lowest price since 1972. United States exports represented 54 percent of all soybeans on the world market in 2000, a value of $6.66 billion.

Major customers for United States soybeans and soy products are Asia, the European Union, and Mexico. Positive industry trends include the demand for soy food products, which has increased steadily since 1980. By the early 2000s, a thornier and still unresolved issue in trade was the use of genetically modified soybeans. Resistance to that biotechnology continued to be particularly strong among European consumers, a key market.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aoyagi, Akiko, and William Shurtleff. Green Vegetable Soybeans, Edamame,& Vegetable-Type Soybeans: Detailed Information on 1,032 Published Documents. Lafayette, Calif.: Soy foods Center, 2001.

———. Henry Ford and his Researchers' Work With Soybeans, Soyfoods and Chemurgy: Bibliography and Sourcebook 1921 to 1993. Lafayette, Calif.: Soyfoods Center, 1994.

Liu, Keshun. Soybeans: Chemistry, Technology, and Utilization. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1997.

Rinzler, Carol Ann. The Healing Power of Soy: The Enlightened Person's Guide to Nature's Wonder Food. Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 1998.

Christine M. Roane