ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the third soy regime – when the United States took the helm of the global food system and the soybean was inserted into the industrialized (mechanized and high input) agriculture of Corn Belt in 1950. The soybean fit perfectly into the Western vision of the Green Revolution in food production – to provide large enough quantities that are cheap enough to allow access to feed poor “underdeveloped” populations while providing the volumes to allow profits for increasingly powerful private actors within the chain – while ignoring social and ecological costs, e.g. removing small farmers and degrading ecosystems. The resulting specialized “US Soy Model” spread across the United States and then south to Latin America. After a “Gene Revolution” mid 1990s, the soybean became the most cultivated biotech crop, the largest protein input in animal feed, the second largest source of vegetable oil and a key biofuel crop. Soy then became the ultimate commodity to feed the “US Soy-Meat Complex”. Throughout the entire period, the agrofood system has become increasingly dominated by corporate firms, resulting in high levels of concentration, financialization, distance and “foreignization” within the current soybean commodity chain. This has also led to social-ecological simplification and disconnection.
