Die wundersame Krisengewinnerin. Sojaexpansion im US-amerikanischen Maisgürtel in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts

The key to explaining the global soy boom from the mid-twentieth century onward lies in the management of the agricultural crisis in the US Midwest in previous decades. Attempts by governmental, corporate, and civic actors to manage the existence-threatening economic and environmental crisis of agriculture in the 1930s as well as resource problems during World War II opened windows of opportunity for the soybean to become permanently entrenched as a staple crop in the farming system of the Corn Belt. The crop from East Asia was hailed as ‘miracle bean’ in Europe and North America due to its outstanding characteristics: the combination of high protein and fat content, the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil, the complementarity with corn cultivation, and so on. The regional soy complex in the US Midwest, i.e. the network of breeding, cultivation, transportation, processing, and utilization, achieved global reach in the postwar US-centered food regime.