First encounters with soya

Soya has been used as food in China since time immemorial. It was even believed that soya was consumed since the first Neolithic civilisations, but we had to wait for the archaeological discoveries of the last decades to authenticate these assumptions.
Records of soya have been found in various ancient Chinese manuscripts. Quite interesting is a document from 2838 BC in which soya is worshipped as one of the five "sacred" crops. The four other vegetable gods being rice, millet, wheat and poppy. Also the legend of emperor Li-Chin emphasises how extremely important soya was for the Chinese people.
The story goes that more than 5000 years ago, an emperor found the wounded and dying God of Apes lying under a tree during his daily walk. The Emperor ordered him brought to the palace where his wounds were healed. Once recovered, the God of Apes decided to thank his saviour, the Emperor.
The God said: "Make your dearest wish and I'll make it come true!" Emperor answered: "My dearest wish is that my people never suffer from hunger". And then the God of the Apes offered him soya beans. This simple story handed down over and over again just amplifies that the unequalled qualities of soya are not just a legend.

“Magic” versatility

The domestication of the soya bean began in China, at least 3.000 years ago, when farmers in the eastern half of northern China started planting the black or brown seeds of a wild recumbent vine. Why they did this is unclear; plants that lie on the ground are hard to cultivate, and the seeds of the wild soya bean are tiny, hard, and, unless properly prepared, indigestible.
Whatever the reason, the farmers persevered, and evidence suggests that by 100 BC the soya bean had been taught to grow straight up and bear larger, more useful seeds.
These changes were sufficient to add the bean to the list of domesticated plants.

The new crop arrived at the right time. The bean is wonderfully abundant in protein of the highest quality, and, within limits, grows well in soils too depleted to support other crops. The soya bean plant supports colonies of microorganisms that pay for themselves in the form of soil-enriching nitrogen.
This was an important point in a civilization that had been farming many of the same fields for thousands of years. The enthusiasm farmers had for their new crop is suggested by some of the names given different varieties: Great Treasure, Brings Happiness, Yellow Jewel, Heaven's Bird. Over the next several hundred years the soya bean spread from its centre of domestication to become a staple of the Chinese people. As it did, the third virtue of the bean (together with high food value and ease of production) appeared - a magic versatility.
Dozens of different forms of food were developed from soya, of which the most important were soya beans sprouts, steamed green beans, roasted soya nuts, soya drink, soya sauce, miso, soya bean oil, tempeh, soya flour and of course doufu (tofu), which is the basis for dozens of other soya foods.

Cultivation of the soya bean spread very slowly from China to Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Soya beans first appeared in Japan in the eighth century AD but did not appear in Europe until almost 1,000 years later. The first public notice of the arrival of soya beans in the West was made by the great Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus, who in 1737 included them in an inventory of plants grown in a garden in Holland. They were introduced to the New World by Samuel Bowen, a merchant who brought seeds back from China in 1765.
For the next century, the soya bean was little more than a botanical curiosity. Then, in the 1880s, French scientists reported that soya beans, unlike other beans, contain virtually no starch, from which the body manufactures sugar, and recommended they be used in diabetic diets. This was the first of a series of discoveries made by the new profession of nutrition as it examined and analysed Glycine max, the soya bean.
A second came 20 years later, when the importance of protein began to be understood: amazingly, the soya bean was found to have an even higher protein content than lean beef.

Over the next several decades, nutritionists explored such things as digestibility, amino acids, vitamin and mineral intake, alkaline-acid balance, allergenicity, salt, fat, cholesterol, metabolic waste products, and hormones and antibiotics.
Each time a new issue arose, someone would check how the soya bean rated, and time and again the bean would be shown to do very well compared with other foods.

Cultivation of soya

Soya beans are grown as a row crop, planted in May or June, and harvested with a grain combine in the fall. Soil on which soya has never been cultivated before,
has to be grafted with the bacteria Rhizobium sp. in order to guarantee a successful crop. The pods are simultaneously ripe and can therefore be harvested in one time.