Writing in 2838 B.C., Emperor Shên-Nung, the father of Chinese agriculture, listed no less than 300 medicinal properties to be found in the soybean, a legume known throughout the Orient as “The Little Honorable Plant.” For at least five millenniums the soybean has been a Far Eastern staple, ranking with rice as a food, standing alone in the number of uses to which it could be put. It is the backbone of Manchukuo economy, two-thirds of the world’s annual crop of 6,000,000 tons of soybeans being raised on the farms of that Japanese puppet State. In the U. S. however, the soybean did not come of age as a commodity until last week, when, after long discussion, it was formally admitted to the Chicago Board of Trade, thus achieving the same economic station as corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye.
Last year “the little honorable plant put $35,000,000 into the pockets of U. S. farmers, outranking in value rye and barley. Soybean trading had grown so active that the Board of Trade could no longer overlook it as a potential source of commissions. First futures transaction in soybeans in the Pit this week was 5,000 bu. sold by Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. to Bartlett-Frazier Co. at $1.20 per bu.
Soybeans mature 100 days from planting but the maturity of soybeans as a major U. S. crop required more than a century. A Yankee shipmaster brought the first soybeans to the U. S. in 1804. Curiously, they became not a field crop but a floricultural pet. Not until 1890 did the Department of Agriculture take the bean seriously. Yet no more than 500,000 acres were planted to soybean in the U. S. in any one year until 1917. Even five years later the crop barely exceeded 1,000,000 acres. From 1928 through 1932 a yearly average of some 2,600,000 acres was harvested. In 1934 acreage jumped to 4,250,000, last year to more than 5,000,000. Last year’s crop amounted to some 40,000,000 bu., more than twice the crop of the previous year, more than thrice the 1929-33 average.
Relatively impervious to either drought, damp or chinch bug, amenable to almost any type of soil, the bean’s chief enemies are rabbits, grasshoppers, blister beetles. Planting time is May and June, same as for corn. Toward the end of September the harvest begins, continues through October and November. Frost does not injure the beans. In the U. S. some 600,000 farmers grow soybeans in 27 states. At present, 40% of the crop comes from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas. But by all odds the No. 1 soybean state is Illinois, which alone produced more than half the total U. S. crop last year.
Food. Soybeans are ideal for diabetics because they contain little sugar, no starch. They do, however, contain more than three times the protein of wheat or eggs, more than twice that of lean meat.
Soybean vitamins are A, B<sub>1</sub>, B<sub>2</sub>, D, E. For vegetarians and diabetics, the bean is converted into cheese, soup, butter, salad oil, macaroni, breakfast food, milk (from grinding the beans in water). To bakers soybeans mean a new bread which is expected to break sales records. Last year vegetable shortenings and other lard substitutes required no less than 52,450,000 lb. of soybean oil, compared to a 1934 consumption of 2,735,000 lb.
A diet limited to soybeans is not fed to livestock because it makes them too fat. But farmers can feed them the meal left over after the oil has been extracted. Silage made from soy plants mixed with cornstalks produces more milk, more meat than straight corn silage. For overworked soil, nitrogenous soy plants are a good builder-up. A green crop of them plowed under will often increase the yield of wheat 6 bu. per acre.
Factory. Each ton of soybeans yields 30 gal. of oil and 1,600 lb. of meal. Industry takes the oil and the meal, uses one or both to make glue, paints, combs, candles, radios, buttons, axlegrease, paper size, explosives, linoleum, oilcloth, printer’s ink, billiard balls, rubber substitutes, cigaret holders, Christmas tree ornaments.
Last year U. S. manufacturers consumed 91,166,000 lb. of soybean oil, of which 2,550,000 lb. went into soaps, 4,800,000 lb. into linoleum and oilcloth, 13,000,000 lb. into paints and varnishes.*
Ford & Future. Republican Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick has been experimenting with soybeans on the Chicago Tribune’s farm at Yorkville, Ill., astounded his readers last spring by expressing approval of Democratic Secretary of Agriculture Henry Agard Wallace when the Department sponsored a laboratory soybean farm at the University of Illinois. The No. 1 U. S. soybean man is Henry Ford. His reason: “If we want the farmer to be our customer, we must find a way to be his customer.”
Henry Ford began investigating the beans in 1930, spent more than $1,000,000 in the next few years growing them, finding out how they could be used. Few months ago the River Rouge works got a $5,000,000 addition in the shape of a soy-bean processing plant. Into Ford cars at present go the product of some 60,000 acres of soybeans. The oil goes into glycerine for shock-absorbers, enamel for body finishes, binder for foundry cores. The meal, turned into plastics, rolls off the assembly line as horn buttons, gearshift knobs, window-trims, distributor cases.
Said Mr. Ford few months ago: “You will see the time when a good many automobile parts will be grown. The engine, driveshaft and a few other parts will, of course, be of steel. But the rest, including the body, will be made of farm, products.”
“Maybe 50 years from now?” a friend asked.
“Fifty years? Humph!” snorted the aging motorman. “Much sooner.”
* Illinois soybean farmers trade so much of their crop in kind to paint makers that last year one out of every ten barns in the state was coated with soybean paint.
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