Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950

Soybeans have been consumed by humans since the Neolithic period. Biologists trace present-day varieties back to a wild soybean plant that was domesticated in East Asia about 6,000-9,000 years ago. Yet, it took most of this exceptionally long period before the crop found its way to other continents, either by accident or by design. Up until the early twentieth century, soybean cultivation, trade, and consumption largely remained within its Asian origins. Back in ancient times, human migration occurred more slowly and to a lesser extent, but once people encountered different parts of the world in the modern period, they took crops, animals, and diseases along with them. Rice has been a staple all over the world for centuries. The Columbian exchange brought sugar, horses, and syphilis from the Old World to the New and shipped potatoes and tobacco, among many other living organisms, in the opposite direction.2 In modern times also East Asia gained the attention of European sea voyagers in their search for new trading routes and business opportunities. In the sixteenth century, Portuguese and later Spanish and Dutch merchants brought spices, tea, and silk to European customers, but none considered the soybean a valuable commodity for trade. To be sure, they as well as missionaries, diplomats, and migrants also introduced the soybean and foods derived from it, but the scope of this transfer remained rather marginal. Outside Asia, soy did not become a commodity of any significant economic value until the early decades of the twentieth century.