How Soybeans Became Ubiquitous

In 1905, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent Frank Meyer to China to look for interesting seeds. Over the next three years the Netherlands-born plant explorer, who had trained at the famous Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam (and changed his name from Frans Meijer when he emigrated to the U.S.), would send back thousands of seeds, cuttings and whole plants. Among that bounty were the slightly sweet variety of lemon that was later named after him, and 44 varieties of soybean.

These weren’t the first soybeans in the Americas. Benjamin Franklin had sent some back to Philadelphia from London in 1770, noting that in China people were said to make “a cheese” out of them. Five years before that a former East India Company sailor had planted a few in Savannah, Georgia, and later even figured out how to make soy sauce. In the 1800s there more U.S. soy-growing experiments, and laborers recruited from China and Japan began to bring not only the beans but also a taste for things made out of them. By the time Meyer traveled to China there were dozens of tofu shops catering to Japanese immigrants up and down the West Coast.