Soy

In the twentieth century, soy emerged as the world’s leading agricultural commodity. Combining a global and centennial perspective with an agro-food approach, the chapter explores waves of globalization through the lens of soy. Having served as regional food crop in East Asia for millennia, soy became a global cash crop in the British-centered food regime (1870–1929), linking the northeast of China as the world’s leading producer to consumer goods industries in Northwest Europe. Soy found enlarged rooms of maneuver in the US-centered food regime (1947–1973), connecting the US Midwest and South as major suppliers in the divided world market with growing demand for animal-based food from Western Europe and Japan. Soy rose to global dominance in the WTO-centered food regime (since 1995), integrating producers in the South American ‘soylandia’ as well as European and East Asian consumers into the global agribusiness complex. Soy’s emergence as a commodity in the slipstream of globalization was driven by state and corporate projects as well as by the crop’s versatility within socio-natural networks.