B (6:20)

That's really interesting. I had no idea there was that personal connection there. And for me, as a historian, mostly of Japan, who also works on food, I've used some old newsreel footage of big, I guess you would call them, rounds of soy being rolled around the docks in Manchuria under Japanese rule. And I think it surprises a lot of students. And I think it goes to that sort of problem of I don't really quite understand how all this world economy of soi fits together. And I think there's a little bit of the sort of dunning Kruger effect where you feel like you understand it, and then the more you think about it, it, the more you realize that you don't really understand it. So for me, this was an interesting opportunity to see the soybean in new light and to learn something more about it. And I started learning about it with the subtitle of your book, which is Fat Feed and sometimes food circa 1900 to 1950. So I think this is a great subtitle. First of all, congratulations on the alliteration. But also it does a really nice job of summing up Both the scope 1900 to 1950 and the argument of the book Fat Feed and Sometimes Food. So to get us started, I wonder if you could unpack that subtitle as a way of getting into the book and explain the three major factors that you identify in spurring the globalization of the soybeans. The first of that is the first of those is technological developments in Europe. Then we have Japanese imperialism. And the third is globalization.

D (8:03)

Yes, I can certainly do that. So my main research question, the one that I started out with, was how did the soybean as an Asian stranger, ended up in the Western world? And here you have to know that we, before the soybean arrived, many other plants, not only from Asia, but also from other parts of the world, had already arrived in the Western or what we associate with the Western world. Think of coffee, think of chocolate, think of tea, think of various spices. They all are around since the early modern times. Soybeans arrived briefly after 1900, and there's a late comer. And my main question was, why is it a late comer? It's a plan that botanists can date thousands of years back in time. So why didn't it leave Asia? That was my earlier, that was one of the questions I was interested in. So I then realized that the demand in soybeans was actually triggered by a demand in fat. And that is how I became more interested in the history of fats, but also everything else that is then related to fat. Soybeans contain basically fat and protein that are the main components in this particular bean. And the Western world, specifically Europe. And here we talk about Great Britain, we talk about France, we talk about Germany, and also Denmark had a demand in fats because they were desperately needed for food purposes, but also for industrial purposes. So, like to produce soap, for instance, or produce pains. All that is based on fats and oils, oils being only the liquid form of fat. So I usually use the umbrella term fat, even though what soybeans contain is technically spoken, an oil. So this demand in soybean, this demand in fat triggered a global surge for other resources. And then there was this very specialized and interesting Japanese company, it's called Mitsui. It was a seibatsu, it was a conglomerate that did a lot of things in Japan, but also in the wider Japanese empire that kind of introduced soybeans to Great Britain. So it was a trading company, but it was also a banking company. They had a banking business, they had a mining business. It was one of these Japanese zaibatsus. And the trading company had offices in various areas around the world, among others in London. And that was because this trading company also traded rice. And they were looking for new markets for rice in Europe. And by gathering all sorts of information, they also sensed, okay, these Brits, they have a higher demand for fat. And we have a solution for that. Our solution are soybeans. They knew that since they had control over specific markets and areas in Manchuria, they knew that Chinese farmers in Manchuria grew soybeans. And they knew that because they imported traded soybean cake that are the round shaped cakes you were mentioning earlier, Nathan. They traded these round cakes from Manchuria to Japan to fertilize the rice paddies in Japan. And these cakes are nothing else than the residue of the milling process. And what do you mill? You mill the bean and you got oil on one hand and you got this residue on the other. So they thought, okay, we have a solution for the European demand in fats, and that is the soybean. Technically, you could say if the Japanese were interested in the cake to fertilize the rice patties, then they could try the oil directly to Europe. That didn't quite work out because the oil grew rancid when being transported over the oceans. So they ended up offering whole soybeans, uncrushed, unprocessed soybeans, to European markets. First of all, British, here we talk about Hull, but then later also to other ports like Rotterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, but also Marseille. And European customers were happy to accept the soybeans because their oil mills, as they were called, could handle a variety of different seeds and beans and fruits. So here we talk about palm oils, but we also talk about other fruits and seeds to produce oils. And they had to do some adjustments to their oil mills, but it was not that difficult, apparently, to make these adjustments. So then they imported the soybeans to offer the oil to markets in Europe in the production of, basically, margarine, soap, and paints. There were other uses, but the main market was that for margarine and then a little bit soaps. And here we talk about lotions, creams, ointments, all that kind of stuff. And then we talk about paints and varnishes, and we talk about the period after 1900, more specifically, even after 1905, after the Chinese Japanese war, when Japan gained bigger foothold in China and that trading company, Mitsui Co. Could expand its activities to the Asian mainland and here, Manchuria. And I'm sorry, it was not the Japanese Chinese war I'm talking about. It was, of course, the Russo Japanese War that was fought on Chinese grounds in Manchuria. So we're talking about the Russo Japanese War that ended in 1905 and that gave Japan greater power in Manchuria. And in that aftermath, after 1905, these soybeans were then traded to Europe, as I said, and they were then in Europe crashed, and the soybean oil was sold to customers producing margarine, soap, and paint, but also to others. This is the period of what we call the second Industrial Revolution. So this is the period where chemists and other scientists got into highly complicated synthesis and chemical processes. So after. Sometimes we talk about, to a limited degree, but we do talk about glue. We do talk about linoleum. We do talk about early forms of plastics. We talk about dynamite and printing ink, among others. So that's where the oil went. But then you have to know that the soybean contains. The soybean varieties at that time contained max 15% of oil. You are not able by. You were not able by processing methods back then to get all the 15% out of it. You got maybe 10. And then imagine how huge the amount of residue from the milling process actually was. And they had to find a solution for that and the solution was easily found because that residue is so rich in protein, you could use it as a protein rich fodder for livestock. And of course they had to do some tracts here, especially when feeding it to cows, because cows actually feed on grass. And now you come with a protein rich bean. So a cow's stomach system is not digestive system is not used to try digesting soybeans poison. But they did some experiments here and there and they did the same with chickens and they did the same with others like pigs and other livestock. So at the end of the day, it was a win win situation because they soon figured, wow, this protein rich feed gives muscle tissue to our livestock. And that's what we actually want. We want, we have fatty pigs, but we also want them to have good meat, good muscle meat that we can eat. And the same with chickens. That is how it all got started. And it was such a story of success that within a very short period of time these soybeans were in high demand on European markets. And now I feel you have to bring me back on track.

B (18:18)

No, not at all. This was, it's a great summation of so much of the sort of origin story for the larger narrative that you're trying to lay out here. Also, I kept hearing, you know, these are a few of my favorite things playing in the background when you're asking me to think about coffee and chocolate and soy and fat and protein. So that was great. I wanted to bring you to Germany, which is one of your case studies, specifically within Europe. Right. The book overall focuses on Japan's territories in Manchuria. So to some extent Japan and Manchuria as an entity. And then you have a case study within these European markets that you're talking about, which is Germany. And then after that we're going to talk about the United States, which is the sort of other big case study that you do. And that's kind of the outlier. But within Europe you started to talk about this idea of the sort of win win scenario for Germany. How was soy integrated into these industrial and agricultural processes? Sort of specifically in ways that might have been either similar to or different from the ways that it was in other European markets.

D (19:35)

Sure. So I already said that Japan tried to gain a foothold on the Asian mainland. And that was of course because of the ongoing imperialism back then. The imperialism that spread from Europe to regions outside Europe. You know, the USA had imperial projects running, Japan had them running. And that basically brought the soybean to the Western world. The connection between imperialism and Economic expansion, this kind of ideas. And Germany comes in precisely because of that, but in a very twisted kind of way. With World War I and the end of World War I, Germany lost its former colonies. And with that direct access to resources in fat. So they could purchase it not only in theory, but also in practice. They could purchase it from British colonies, from French colonies, like we talk about palm oil or palm nuts, we talk about coconuts that all grew in various regions in both Africa, but also in Southeast Asia. But they were not under the control of the German Empire any longer, that after 1918 didn't exist anyway in that form. So now we are entering the period of the Weimar Republic when the Germans had no colonies any longer. And then there were a few political and economic considerations, but also some ideological considerations at work that let Germans discover the soybeans. So for German oil millers, partly the argument was, okay, we need cheap resources, our finances are down, our economy is down, so we need cheap resources and we don't want to become dependent on British or French supplies. So we, whenever we can, we want to limit imports from colonies that are under their control. That is why they, on the one hand they needed to import something. On the other hand, their choices were not limited, but in their minds they were limited. And then they came up with the idea that, wow, soybeans from China, that is not under the control of whatsoever empire. Let's import the soybeans. There was an illusion German oil miners were not aware about the great power Japan had over Manchuria. They just thought that it's not controlled by a European power. Let's import these soybeans. They were traded by Japanese companies, partly also by Danish companies. They were cheap. They were among the cheapest on the world market, together with linseed oil or linseeds and cottonseeds. But linseed had limited uses, especially when it comes to food. Linseed oil has a specific taste bite. Taste the Germans were not so interested in. Some of them are and various reasons they like linseed oil, but in others it's rather considered as off putting in a way. So they tried to avoid using linseed oil in the production of margarine. On the other hand, they had to limit the use of linseed oil because linseed oil has the dries out on fresh air and that makes it perfect when you paint something that really whatever you paint, dries out and that nothing is sticky when you touch it. So that channeled all the linseed supplies or the linseed oil supplies into that paint market. Cotton seeds were on offer by American supplies and by British supplies. They were cheap. But production, especially in the interwar period, was going up and down. So soybeans seemed to be perfect here as a supply for oils. What also helped with triggering the demand for soybeans, specifically in Germany, was that, as I said, the German economy was down. Livestock production was down as well. And the idea was that if we, the Germans, import more soybeans, we then channel the soybean oil to the margarine production. It's a more affordable substitute for butter. And we channel the residue of the milling process to farmers to increase livestock production. And with that, they are able to offer more meat to German customers. And with that, they were also able. That was at least the idea. They were also able to increase specifically pig production because there was a. Back then, there was still the idea that lard is a beautiful product. We don't like lard these days, but back then, 100 years ago, lard was an excellent product. You could use it for frying, for shortening. You could spread it, you could bake with it. You could do so many things with lard. But lard comes from what Germans called fatty pigs. And to have enough lard, you need to feed them with potter, of course, and soybean as a fodders. The residue of the milling process seemed to be a perfect fit here. And that's how Germany actually got into this dependency on soybeans from Manchuria, traded, as I said, by Japanese and Danish trading companies. And what is also good to know here maybe, is that the Germans. There was a development from the Weimar Republic into the Nazi period that dependency on Manchurian soybeans. And through that, Germany became actually the main customer of whole soybeans from Manchuria. No other country in any part of the world imported more whole soybeans than Germany. Others did import them as well. Even Norway imported soybeans. Denmark, of course, Great Britain, France, they all imported soybeans, but not to that extent.

E (27:26)

All right, listen up. Nacho chips. Quiet down. Crispy potatoes. This is the moment Velveeta's been preparing you for, and you're not about to crack under pressure. Today's the day to go all in on the drip. Velveeta's heat.

D (27:39)

Eat and eat.

E (27:39)

Queso is the MVP of any game day spread. So stick by them and you'll be golden. Now get out there and make delicious history. No tailgate party is complete without Velveeta.

F (27:54)

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B (28:24)

Yeah, that was one of the most, for me, surprising things that I learned from the book. I had never really considered even the possibility that Germany was the world's leading importer of soy in that period. And in that sense, I guess it's sort of obviously there are lots of shrewd political and business decisions behind that, but it does make Germany quite an outlier globally in terms of its consumption. The other outlier in your story is, as I suggested, America, which, I mean, in some senses it's always the outlier in everything. But unlike Germany, it is sort of the odd man out here for a different reason. Right. So Germany, as you've described, becomes heavily dependent on the import of soy for fat and for protein in that interwar period, the rise of soy cultivation in the US and so this is not a matter of import, it's a matter of actually cultivating soy in the US Starts out to address a very different set of problems, a crisis. So I wanted to ask you about two things in that respect. So first, can you tell us about what you describe as waves of pure necessity that drove the expansion of mass soybean production in the US and the second is, despite the differences between the history of soy in Germany and in America, one of the arguments that you make about globalization, and specifically about the globalization of soy in the early 20th century, actually ties the two countries together. And I want to quote you here, you write that at World War I's end, soybeans vanished quickly from European and American tables, but not from their markets. And I mean, I see this as quite important and I'd like you to expand on that. So the first one is the waves of pure necessity, and the second is the vanishing of the soybean from the table.

D (30:23)

Sure. Let me briefly go back that you mentioned. You had no clue that Germany played such a big role here. Nobody had. And even back then, normal people would not have an idea that they depended on soybeans. They would not even have heard about it. Soybeans were around in very specific circles, very specialized circuits, like some agriculturalists worked on soybeans, particularly also in Austria, but also in Germany to try out whether they would grow on German soil as well. Oil millers knew about the situation with the soybean farmers did, because they bought it as a protein rich fodder. But normal people would not have whatsoever clue that they would eat meat or fat produced by means of soybeans. And the same goes for the soap and the margarine they consumed, they ate. That was a little bit different during World War I. And that brings me to your actual question. During World War I, of course, imports from Manchuria went down not immediately, but with the British blockade after 1916, definitely after 1917, there were no whatsoever soybeans on the German market. But the imports were going down slowly. And then the Germans in a way, kind of discovered what we know all about today is it's much easier to consume soybeans directly and then get the soybeans from the protein from the soybeans instead of eating meat based on soybean fodder. So back then, Germans decided to not feed the soybeans to their livestock, but to hand it out to the people directly. Sometimes with the effort of producing recipe books, but most often there was nothing around than a few soybeans. If you kind of treat soybean, dried soybeans, the same way as you would treat your regular dried beans that you would grow in your tiny little garden, then you end up with a lot of problems. It is very difficult for the human body to digest soybeans directly. Dried soybeans, not edamama, which is the green kind of unripe soybean. But the dried soybean is very hard for humans to digest. If you don't treat it the proper way, you end up with bloating and other kind of problems. And then there was one area handing out soybeans directly. Another area during World War I in Germany was, and also in the United States, but I'll talk about the States in a second, was to still process the beans, channel the oil into margin production and process the residue of the milling process further so that you have some sort of meal milled further and further that you have a meal and then that kind of meal of flour. You have a flour actually, that flour you can actually sell and then you can hand it out. The pure world flour in German meal, you know, you associate it with some sort of carbohydrate. But soybean flour contains anything. But that basically means you were given a protein rich flour that would turn rancid very quickly because it still contains some oil and you cannot make use of it in the same way as you would make of bread flour. So we are talking about the thyme. When some people invented protein rich breads that we now go to various supermarkets in various countries and you can buy protein bread that's perfect. Back then, people were first of all not used to it. They expected the real bread and they were not used to having this kind of rancid product. So World War I came with shortages. Soybeans. They didn't know how to make use of it and they tried to get rid of as soon as possible. That happened both in Germany and to some degree also in the United States. Because the United States was by no means short in many products. But they had also discovered the soybean by that time and also tried to make use of it for regular consumption. And they even came up with recipe books for soybean flour. How to save on fats and proteins to win the war, what it was called. And as you were right and pointed out correctly, the Americans did not discover the soybean because they needed proteins or fat. That came a little bit later. They discovered soybeans because of depleted soils. They had specifically farmers in the Midwest, but also in the southern states had depleted their soils by the monoculture of cotton in the south and in the Southeast. And because of the monoculture with corn in the midwestern areas. Both of these crops were cultivated year after year. The soil had not enough time to recover. They would not grow plants like clover that helped these soils to recover. They would not grow interim plants. That basically meant soils were depleted. But it also meant that diseases could spread easily and had it easily on these two plants crops. So we talk about bugs here that destroyed the harvest for both cotton and corn. The corn borer. Some people might be familiar with that term, especially American listeners, I guess. So American farmers had a problem and they discovered the soybean as a crop that would bring nutrients back to their soil. Because these soybean roots are built in a very specific way. They have tiny little noodles on their roots. And these noodles are able to give nitrogen back to the soil. And this nitrogen then is much needed when growing crops that have a need in nitrogen. And here we talk about corn again, and we talk about cotton again. So they kind of discovered the soybean for that reason. The whole story is a little more complicated than that. And you can read it in the book. There are bacterias involved and other things. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but that is the main reason why American farmers discovered the soybean and then, of course, course, also with the help of some scientists who found out about all of that, they soon. And then after World War I, they founded what is now known as the American Soybean Association. They lobbied hard at the American government to promote soybean cultivation in the 1920s, and they succeeded with that to some degree. But the actual rise in soybean production was then triggered in the 1930s, in the aftermath of the Great Depression and of measures that were then taken in America. So for those who are interested, soybeans were not a crop affected by AAA directly. It was not addressed in aaa, but it benefited indirectly because of limitations on other crops. Farmers then discovered the soybean as an alternative crop. And then the whole thing basically took off with the Second World War. When the United States entered the Second World War, they definitely had shortages in. They had shortages in few products, not that many, but they had shortages in, for instance, rubber that is most known. But they also had shortages in fats. And they did a lot of things to promote the production of homegrown fats. And here we talk about the increase of peanut production. We talk about the increase of pigs again. We talk about the increase again of cotton, because cotton seeds, you can turn cotton seeds into cottonseed oil, then you have oil. And we talk about the production of soybeans. And what that all sums up to that. I basically tell a story of the soybean entering the Western world by means of war and crisis. It's the Russo Japanese War that brought the soybeans to the European markets in the first place. It's in the aftermath of the First World War, when the economy was down in Germany and when the agriculture, precisely specifically in the United States was down, brought the soybeans again because of the crisis of the 1920s. Germany, economy, America, agriculture. Then we talk about the Great Depression as the next crisis that again triggered soybean demand and soybean production. And then we talk about the Second World War that again triggered soybean production. So this is not because people thought, what a fantastic product. How interesting, let's get it. No, they needed it.

B (41:52)

And what was just fascinating for me to see that sort of at every turn, there's a crisis for which the soybean is the answer, right? It's the answer for somebody somewhere. And I guess that speaks to what's interesting about doing a history of soy. And I'm sure I'm not saying anything you don't already know, but another thing that was sort of fascinating for me, having grown up. I'm from one of the big corn producing regions in the U.S. you know, lots of sweet corn where I grew up, where I grew up. And then I spent a number of years both as a student and as a teacher in the Midwest, surrounded by, you know, hundreds of miles of corn in every direction, most of which was going to feed. Oh, well, yeah, pluses and minuses, but. So of course, you know, with that background, I had some sense of nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots and that's why you rotate the crops. But I didn't really understand how new a process that was in the history of agriculture sort of globally and specifically in the US So that was really interesting. Even as somebody who'd grown up surrounded by corn, that was something I just didn't realize. So you've already alluded a little bit in your last answer to something you touch on in the epilogue, which is the sort of afterlife in the post war of soy and sort of getting up to the present day. So compared to the decades that occupy your time in the body of the book, right, these mostly wartime and interwar decades, what's changed and what's remained the same in the ways that we use soy today? Maybe to put it differently, does soy mean something different in our global culture or economy than it did previously? And if so, how.

D (43:48)

Things have changed when it comes to meaning, particularly in the last 20 years, but not right after the Second World War. Right after the Second World War, things would basically continue in the same way as they started during the Second World War with soybean cultivation expanding, particularly in the United States. With the end of the Second World War, the United States produced most soybeans worldwide. It had passed Manchuria. Manchuria by then was of course, a part of China. Again, the Chinese would not export or to a very, very limited degree, export soybeans. On the contrary, they would rather import the soybeans from various markets. The main producer of Soybeans were the U.S. and they would kind of trade it all over the world. They were used in the same way that they were doing it before the war. Oil on the one hand, residue on the other hand. They would definitely come up with new technologies in terms of processing it. They would come up with new varieties that would grew in different climates. Here we specifically talk about plants that could tolerate the difference in length of the day. That is something that affects the soybean plant more than other plants. So they would do a lot of research into botanical research into the plant and into the processing. But the main way of using it remained basically the same. And it is like that up to this day. It's an oil crop for the food and agriculture organizations of the United nations. And it is a. A very important plant for fodder, protein rich fodder. There were a few things that changed in the 1960s and 70s, and that is that regions in Southern America entered the picture. By 1990, Brazil had produced soybeans to a significant amount, but it took again 10 years. I think it was in the early 2000s that Brazil produced equal amounts of soybeans than the United States. And it's rising. We talk about millions, hundreds of millions of tons that are produced each year. So we talk about an expansion of soybean production globally. That is unimaginably so. That has changed and it has definitely changed. That soybean production is now something that is done in Southern America. That we talk about the deforestation of the rainforest. That has also changed. What I mean with changes in the last 20 years is that few people are aware about these consequences. And the number of people being aware of these consequences, and especially when it comes to the environment, is growing that number of people. So there are more people now than 20 years ago that know that we do deforest the rainforest, that know people that know that too much meat consumption is bad for the environment for various reasons. Belching cows, for example, is an issue here. But we also talk about chicken production and we talk specifically in Norway also about the production production of salmon that based on soybeans. I mean, imagine a fish swimming in the ocean having not so ever natural contact with soybeans, but is being fed with soybean meal. So people know about all that and are being more aware. I hope we can change it into a direction that saves our environment that we have destroyed in the past hundred years due to soybean consumption. It would be much better if we would simply eat the soybean processed in ways that we as humans can digest them. As I said, we need specific techniques, need something here, fermentation, for example, to process the soybeans in a way that we can digest them. But I can only hope that this kind of trend grows and not stops somewhere.

B (49:09)

Yeah, and I think this is a really interesting way to sort of finish up in thinking about finding soy once again at the center of a crisis here. It's both part of the crisis itself and potentially part of the solution. And I think that again speaks to why soy is such an interesting subject and I was very glad to have the opportunity to talk with you about it. Today in finishing up, I did want to ask what it is that you're up to these days. We haven't actually had a chance to talk about this, so this is. Yeah. I know that you're also very busy with many things here at the university. If our administrators are listening, you could give Inez a break maybe. But. Yeah. What is it that you're up to in terms of research?

D (49:49)

I found the history of fat actually super intriguing. In my book on the soybeans, I basically looked at economic aspects, Right. But with fat, I consider looking at economic aspects, but also like more on cultural aspects. Fat is so interesting. It was in high demand. In all human history, fat was in high demand. Now we literally swim on fat. Fat is bad. Fat is bad for your body. Fat makes yourself fat. Fat is something we try to avoid. And I find it so intriguing, this switch and the perception and assumptions about fat that I consider doing something on fat. But fat is literally as big as. I mean, it's a macronutrient. Right. It's as big as proteins, as big as carbohydrates. So I haven't quite figured out what to do, but look forward to doing. To me, doing something on fat. And I just wanted to say I'm very glad I was here. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed this very much.

B (51:05)

I did as well. And thank you. Take care.

D (51:08)

Bye.