Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America by Matthew Roth (review)

Roth’s Magic Bean is about soybeans and so much more. The story of the soybean in the United States is one of multiple attempts to make a plant profitable through the application of science and persuasion by scientists, government bureaucrats, the usda, producer groups, corporations, and other interested parties. Roth’s organizing question—Was the soybean destined to flourish in the United States, or was its success a result of lucky breaks?—will simultaneously please and frustrate those who view the past through a lens of social-construction historiography. Few historians would claim that anything is destined for success or failure. Instead, most agree that human intervention and advocacy, creativity and innovation, not to mention profit and loss, all figure into an outcome. The “lucky breaks” of Roth’s narrative are the stuff that animate any narrative.

That said, Roth tells a fascinating story of the waxing and waning of the soybean’s fortunes in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Roth begins with the U.S. government scientists tasked with locating soy cultivars in Asia who learned about the merits of soy’s application as a forage crop as well as a food staple. Scientists recognized the local importance of tofu, known as “bean cheese,” but few believed that tofu would be an important food in America, although it had already taken hold in immigrant communities on the West Coast and among vegetarians. American vegetarians, most notably Adventists, argued for the value of soy food, but the smart investment was in soy as a forage crop. Scientists and agricultural experts believed that soy could lessen cotton dependency in the South by restoring soil health and providing forage for increased livestock production.

Multiple obstacles blocked the spread of soy raised for seed, including the need to appropriate harvest technology, the lack of the milling capacity, and the problems of taste and dietary expectations. Even so, promoters continued to work on behalf of soy food and such by-products as plastic and oil; wartime conditions provided an added boost. In both world wars, government researchers and bureaucrats hoped that soy could replace other foods that were deemed valuable for fighting men. Cut off from the supply of food-grade oil from Asia, the United States turned to soy for use in food as well as industrial applications. During World War II, New York Governor Thomas Dewey hosted a widely publicized soy meal for his family and the media to showcase its viability and tastiness. His fear, which others shared, that meat protein would be lost not just during wartime but also during the postwar years made soy a necessary replacement food. The return of peace, however, saw soy proponents frustrated for a variety of reasons, including the surprising availability of meat protein and the problem of soy’s flavor due to its processing techniques. Scientists managed to improve the taste just as the work of dietary reformers and changing demographics provided an opening for soy food. Meanwhile, soy protein for livestock feed surged; acreage dedicated to soy was a remarkable late twentieth-century change in agriculture.

Magic Bean is a valuable contribution to multiple historiographies and a model commodity study. Roth shows the complex relationships between corporations, government agencies and scientists, farmers and farm organizations, ethnic communities, and utopian reformers with great clarity. Only a couple of items detract. A chapter about the development of the trade in soy futures feels disassociated from the narrative. Furthermore, the title of this book, though provocative, is underdeveloped. No reader would assert that the soybean possessed magical qualities along the lines of a fairy tale, despite the many people who were entranced by the plant. The many billions of dollars invested in production and many billions more generated through soy agriculture, food, and industrial applications is staggering. The fact that the bean has achieved an elevated position in American agriculture is even more astounding because...