RHN 19/2026 | Event
Organisers: Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History (ICAG), KU Leuven
23 March 2026, online
The Soybean through World History: Globalization, Frontiers, and the Making of a Planetary Commodity
Online ICAG-Seminar
This talk traces the global history of the soybean as a lens through which to explore the dynamics of agrofood globalization. From its origins as a peasant food in ancient China to its current position as the world’s most cultivated biotech crop, the soybean has continually shifted in meaning, use, and geography. Today, processed soybeans constitute the largest source of protein feed and the second largest source of vegetable oil worldwide, a testament to both their centrality and their contradictions. The global expansion of soy cultivation is tightly intertwined with the rise of meat consumption, driving deforestation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions, while contributing to a food system marked simultaneously by obesity, hunger, and undernourishment.
Using a world-historical approach and developed together with a transdisciplinary research team, this presentation examines the long-run processes that have shaped today’s global configuration of soy production, trade, and consumption. By situating the soybean within successive historical regimes of agriculture, trade, and science, it highlights the interconnected social-ecological transformations that underpin our present food order and recovers alternative trajectories of soy production and use that were lost along the way.
In line with world history’s conceptualization of the planet as a single, historically entangled entity, the talk reflects on how both shifts and continuities in the longue durée of the soybean help us understand the historical, present, and future pathways of the global agrofood system
Matilda Baraibar Norberg is Associate Professor (docent) of Economic History and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sciences and Global Development. She also serves as subject coordinator for Environmental Sciences. Her research adopts a historically informed political economy approach to global development, with a particular focus on agro-food production, trade, and consumption. She examines how agrarian change, technological shifts, and institutional arrangements unfold differently across regions and historical periods.
One of her recent publications is "The Soybean through World History: Lessons for Sustainable Food Systems" (Routledge, 2023). This book explores the evolving roles and functions of soy in world history, from its use as a food crop in ancient China to its present-day impact as the main driver of deforestation in the Amazon. The book delves into the long historical cycles of soy production, its influence on vast trade networks, and its complex social-ecological consequences. It is co-authored with Lisa Deutsch from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.
Registration and further information: https://cagnet.be/page/icag-seminarie-maandag-23-maart-2026
Source: https://cagnet.be/page/icag-seminarie-maandag-23-maart-2026