SOYA BEANS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18593, 2 January 1935, Page 2

SOYA BEANS

AID TO THE FARMER

SUCCESSFUL ESSEX CROP

BOREHAM (Essex), Oct. 9

Mr. Henry Ford, who makes motor oars by-the million, has opened up prospects ...of. a. golden future for British farmers. On a farm of the Fords.on estate at Boreham, near Chelmsford, lie has succeeded' in growing and harvesting the first crop of soya beans —20 acres —ever grown in Great Britain on a commercial scale.

The estate offices have been inundated with letters from farmers all over Great Britain and from many parts of the Continent during the last fortnight. For the s,oya bean is the most, valuable bean in the world. It is the richest in oil and protein content. It. can he used in scores of manufacturing processes. In America Mr. Ford uses the soya bean in making the knobs of the electric horns, steering wheels, and the knobs of the gear levers.

BETTER BEANS

Manchuria produced practically the world’s whole supply of soya beaus before America began to grojv them. Mr. Ford’s beans arc said to be better, if anything, than those produced either in Manchuria or America. The Ministry of Agriculture is interested in them, for Great Britain imports hundreds of thousands of tons of soya beans every year, Seed from this year’s cr.op will be available for. British farmers. _ Last year Mr. Ford experimented with soya bean seeds purchased from Professor .T. L. North, late curator of the Botanical Gardens, Regent’s I aik. For 20 year's Professor North has been persistently persuading the soya bean to grow on English soil. Year after year he experimented' on a tinv plot of ground in Regent’s ■Vark*

The crop,which has just been harvested at ' Borchnm is the materialisation of all his dreams and his years of patient effort. Professor North, living now in retirement in Chiswick, may yet become known as the man who provided Great Britain with a great now source of revenue.