A WONDER PLANT

Hokitika Guardian, 21 October 1931, Page 7

A WONDER PLANT

ROMANCE OF THE SOYA BEAN, (By A.AY. in Auckland Star.) The most interesting thing in Manchuria is not the clash of political interests that centres round its railways. It is the miracle of plant alchemy by which an influx of up to 2,000,000 human beings a year is absorbed and fed. Think of that stream of people swarming -over the land like locusts, each new batch going further and further afield to find an unoccupied place in which to settle, all of them - poor in worldly goods and utterly destitute of money. Then remember that Manchuria has no unemployment problem, that those people scratching the soil with primitive instruments not only provide themselves with food, but produce an exportable surplus that fills with shipping the busy Manchurian port of Dairen.

Russian railways, Japanese brains and Chinese industry all have their part in this miracle of colonisation, but the chief factor of success isi the won-der-working soya bean. The Chinese have known and used this crop for 5000 years, and apparently China was not suitable for it® cultivation on a large scale, and toilsomely-grown rice •remained their staple foodstuff. Be* fore the country was opened up by Hussion railways Manchuria was too turbulent a country for peaceful penetration by Chinese peasants. They first gained a footing when thousands of coolies were brought in to build the short cut to the Russian trans-Siberian railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok. From the centre of that line at Harbin* a* branch known as the South Manchurian railway was dropped to the sea at Dairen, near Port Arthur, in the extreme south. No sooner were these lines completed than war broke out between' Russia and Japan, and when it was over Japan had establish- | ed herself in Manchuria by gaining control of the Southern Railway. Jap- j ane.se influence is confined to a nar-

row strip on each side of the line, much like the United States zone at the Panama Canal. Along this strip of country, policed, by thousands of Japanese troops, modern cities, full of Japanese mills and factories, have sprung up. To keep these factories busy, and supply Japan with foodstuffs, the stream of Chinese immigration is directed. No other race on earth can be settled on the land at so little cost, with such primitive implements, and work so hard and happily for so little return. The Japanese can. not compete with them as producers, and are directing their whole attention of industrialism, manufaeuring the products of Chinese labour. A mud hut, a donkey, a primitive plough, a hoe, some honn seeds, and a- supply of bean cake I'm* food until the crop is .grown, are all that is needed to settle a Chinese family on the land in Ma.nchuriat. And this in a country where the year’s work must be crowded into the short, hot summer before the winter drops the temperature too far below zero.

The soya bean accounts for almost the whole of 'Manchuria’s £100,000,000 output of produce, something like 600,000,000 tons being grown. The other crops are sorghum, used principally for the distillation of an alcoholic drink, and tobacco. No other foodstuff but the soya bean is needed, and a catalogue of its uses reads like a company prospectus. Only during the last ten years has it become of international importance, as other nations awakened to its value. Large crops are now being grown in the Southern States of America, where it is planted between the rows of maize, and used principally fof cattle food. It is a bushy annual,' growing about two feet high, with a smad purple •ilower, followed by bean-like seeds in a pod, and is closely related to the groundnut, known here as the peanut. The beans seem to partake of the properties of animal, vegetable and nvneral. Not only is their oil content high, they are also rich iin albuminoids, particularly in the substance known as legumin, or vegetable casein. They suppiy direct from the soil all the elements which we obtain by the round-about process of growing grass to be transmuted by the bodies of animals into milk, butter and meat. From the crushed beans a thick, milky liquid is obtained which can be drupk as milk or made lin'to rich cheese. •Coagulated by a special process, the casein can also be made into buttons and other articles for which milk casein is often employed. The o 1 is used as a substitute for butter, 'enters largely into margarine, is burned as fuel, or used for lubrication. It also enters into soap, varnishes, paints, linoleum and most things for which linseed oil is often employed. The ,flour ground from 'the beans is made into noodles, a species of vermicelli much used by the C'h iiese, and is being largely used in Italy for v _ making both macaroni and bread. It. has also a world market as a nonstarchy food for diabetic patients.