During the ancient Zhou dynasty, soyabeans were among China’s five sacred grains.

Thousands of years later soyabeans maintain their importance to the Chinese and most other Asians, but they have recently triggered much more down-to-earth preoccupations.

On Monday, 10,000 Indonesians demonstrated outside the presidential palace in Jakarta after soyabean prices soared more than 50 per cent in the past month and 125 per cent over the past year, leaving huge shortages in markets. And while the social unrest has not yet spread to other Asian nations, consumer frustrations are mounting.

From tofu in China to miso, or soyabean paste, in Japan, soya products are an essential ingredient in Asian cuisine as well as staple food for the region’s poor.

For many Indonesians, a piece of tempeh, or fermented soyabean cake, is often their only source of protein, and last year soya products accounted for 22 per cent of Indonesians’ protein intake, excluding rice, according to government data.

“It’s probably double that for poor people, who make up almost half the population, because it’s the cheapest protein source,” says Harbrinderjit Dillon, an agriculture analyst.

“The crisis shows how low the government has sunk. The public’s attitude is that if it can’t even take care of [soyabean products] then what can it do?”

World soyabean prices climbed to a record this week, partly because ­farmers in the US and Asia have instead been growing corn, palm oil and other crops to supply the biofuel industry. Bad harvests in Latin America and rising Chinese demand have added to the price pressure.

“It’s finally a trade-off between filling stomachs and filling diesel tanks in cars and trucks,” says Ashok Gulati, director at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The Indonesian government is now taking tentative steps to address the price surge, but their impact could prove limited. Mustafa ­Abubakar, the head of ­Indonesia’s government logistics agency, said on Thursday that Jakarta would import lower-quality soyabeans than previously from the US to help contain the price surge.

Authorities in other countries are also starting to act. In South Korea, the national agency handling imports, Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corporation, is poised to increase soyabean imports to contain prices, while the Korean agricultural ministry has formed a taskforce to deal with the worries over price.

Full Story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/508be5de-c552-11dc-811a-00007
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