Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/702

 The Richest Food in the World

Solving the food problem with the Soya Bean By Hudson Maxim

Hudson Maxim is the inventor of smokeless powders used by the United States army and navy. He is America's foremost authority on high explosives. As a member of the Naval Consulting Board, he has given up much of his time to the consideration of war inventions. The food problem seems to him the most important of all, and here he suggests a method of using the Chinese soya bean in solving that problem. — Editor

��IN my book, "De- fenseless Amer- ica," published three years ago, I called attention to the defenselessness of this country, but in that book I dealt mainly \vith our lack of prepara- tion in respect of fighting men, fight- ing ships, and all the munitions and military equipment of war. All my con- clusions in that book have been most emphatically veri- fied by results since our entrance into the present war.

But there was one very important phase of our unpreparedness for war which I did not mention and that was the food prob- lem. The provision and distribution of food has proved to be one of the main problems of the war, and the solution seems farther off than ever. Present tendencies indicate that the time is near when the production and proper disposition of food to our own people, to our Allies and armies over-seas will be the most baffling task which we shall have to accom- plish.

The food problem is a three-in-one problem — first its growing, second its transportation, third its con- sumption.

There is enormous acre- age in the United States, not at present profitably

���Hudson Maxim is now turning his atten- tion from explosives to the study of foods

��employed, which can be devoted to raising some of the most nourishing and valuable of foods, provided that the market price and means of transportation were such as to make the work profitable to the farmer. Throughout the South, especially, are large areas which have been abandoned because of the cotton boll-weevil. These areas could be very profitably employed in rais- ing a great variety of foods not at present cultivated to the extent which they ought to be raised. Among these the principal is the Chinese soya bean, a food which is so rich in fat and protein as to outclass

���Here we see the soya bean being handled in quantity in its native country. Note the peculiar topped baskets

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