This book examines the changing roles and functions of the soybean throughout world history and discusses how this reflects the complex processes of agrofood globalization. The book uses a historical lens to analyze the processes and features that brought us to the current global configuration of the soybean commodity chain. From its origins as a peasant food in ancient China, today the protein-rich soybean is by far the most cultivated biotech crop on Earth; used to make a huge variety of food and industrial products, including animal feed, tofu, cooking oil, soy sauce, biodiesel and soap. While there is a burgeoning amount of literature on how the contemporary global soy web affects large tracts of our planet’s social-ecological systems, little attention has been given to the questions of how we got here and what alternative roles the soybean has played in the past. This book fills this gap and demonstrates that it is impossible to properly comprehend the contemporary global soybean chain, or the wider agrofood system of which it is a part, without looking at both their long and short historical development. However, a history of the soybean and its changing roles within equally changing agrofood systems is inexorably a history about globalization. Not only does this book map out where soybeans are produced, but also who governs, wields power and accumulates capital in the entire commodity chain from inputs in production to consumption, as well as identifying the institutional context the global commodity chain operates within. The book concludes with a discussion of the main challenges and contradictions of the current soy regime that could trigger its rupture and end. This book is essential reading for students, practitioners and scholars interested in agriculture and food systems, global commodity chains, globalization, environmental history, economic history and social-ecological systems.

This book won the prestigious Oberly Award for the best bibliography in the agricultural or natural sciences in 2009 It contains 2,336 references. Begins with a chronology of soy in Africa from 1857 to 2009. This is a book about the history of soybeans and soyfoods in Africa, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoro Islands, Comoros, Congo Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of (DRC), Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Cote d'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Niger, Reunion, Rhodesia, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Contains a full-page color map of soy in Africa, plus 25 historical illustrations and photos, many color.

Plants are an important source of fats and oils, which are essential for the human diet. In recent years, genomics of oil biosynthesis in plants have attracted great interest, especially in high oil-bearing plants, such as sesame, olive, sunflower, and palm. Considering that, genome sequencing projects of these plants have been undertaken with the help of advanced genomics tools such as next generation sequencing. Several genome sequencing projects of oil crops are in progress and many others are en route. In addition to genome information, advanced genomics approaches are discussed such as transcriptomics, genomics-assisted breeding, genome-wide association study (GWAS), genotyping by sequencing (GBS), and CRISPR. These have all improved our understanding of the oil biosynthesis mechanism and breeding strategies for oil production. There is, however, no book that covers the genomes and genomics of oil crops. For this reason, in this volume we collected the most recent knowledge of oil crop genomics for researchers who study oil crop genomes, genomics, biotechnology, pharmacology, and medicine. This book covers all genome-sequenced oil crops as well as the plants producing important oil metabolites. Throughout this book, the latest genomics developments and discoveries are highlighted as well as open problems and future challenges in oil crop genomics. In doing so, we have covered the state-of-the-art of developments and trends of oil crop genomics.

The Government of Beans is about the rough edges of environmental regulation, where tenuous state power and blunt governmental instruments encounter ecological destruction and social injustice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Paraguay was undergoing dramatic economic, political, and environmental change due to a boom in the global demand for soybeans. Although the country's massive new soy monocrop brought wealth, it also brought deforestation, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, and violence. Kregg Hetherington traces well-meaning attempts by bureaucrats and activists to regulate the destructive force of monocrops that resulted in the discovery that the tools of modern government are at best inadequate to deal with the complex harms of modern agriculture and at worst exacerbate them. The book simultaneously tells a local story of people, plants, and government; a regional story of the rise and fall of Latin America's new left; and a story of the Anthropocene writ large, about the long-term, paradoxical consequences of destroying ecosystems in the name of human welfare.

The world's most comprehensive, well documented and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 189 photographs and illustrations, many in color. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books.

Revised 2nd edition, with roughly twice as many pages and twice as many photos as the 1st edition of 2011. The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographical index. 235 photographs and illustrations. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books.