Multiple Soy

The Transformation of Soybean Science in Taiwan since 1945

Abstract

This paper studies soy science in postwar Taiwan, where the Republic of China (ROC) government incorporated the crop into its development strategy. Using the infrastructure created in the Japanese colonial era (1895–1945), the ROC promoted rice–soy multiple cropping to increase the production of food, feed, and fat. By 1970, however, the liberalization of grain import from the United States led to the collapse of Taiwan’s soy sector. Soybean scientists in Taiwan then turned their attention to collaboration with Southeast Asian nations via the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), an international centre created in Taiwan in 1971 to extend the Green Revolution in cereal grains to vegetables. By analysing materials from Taiwan’s agricultural agencies and the Rockefeller Archival Center, I intend to bring the history of a minor soy-consuming country into the wider studies of soybean trade between China, Japan, and the Americas. I also scrutinize how a non-monoculture, yet no less chemically intensive soy research program emerged in Cold War Southeast Asia. Through an approach employing history of science and food regime theory, this paper contextualizes soy agro-food systems in less explored regions and scrutinizes the politics of soy from a new angle.