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Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumAfghans Don't Like Soybeans, Despite a Big US Push
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25206-afghans-dont-like-soybeans-despite-a-big-us-pushAfghans Don't Like Soybeans, Despite a Big US Push
Monday, 28 July 2014 10:10 By Alexander Cohen and James Arkin, The Center for Public Integrity | Report
Afghanistan has a rich culinary tradition, but soybeans have not been a part of it. American agricultural experts who consider soybeans a superfood find this dismaying, and so over the past four years, they have invested tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to try to change the way Afghans eat.
The effort, aimed at making soy a dietary staple, has largely been a flop, marked by mismanagement, poor government oversight and financial waste, according to interviews and government audit documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.
Warnings by agronomists that the effort was unwise were ignored. The countrys climate turns out to be inappropriate for soy cultivation and its farming culture is ill-prepared for large-scale soybean production. Soybeans are now no more a viable commercial crop in Afghanistan than they were in 2010, when the $34 million program got started, according to a government-funded evaluation of the effort this year.
These are the bureaucratic explanations. The ambitious effort also appears to have been undone by a simple fact, which might have been foreseen but was evidently ignored: Afghans dont like the taste of the soy processed foods. This view survived even the U.S. governments use of what it called food technologists to teach families how soybean products can be used to make tasty meals.
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Afghans Don't Like Soybeans, Despite a Big US Push (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Jul 2014
OP
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)1. This says it all
Warnings by agronomists that the effort was unwise were ignored. The countrys climate turns out to be inappropriate for soy cultivation and its farming culture is ill-prepared for large-scale soybean production. Soybeans are now no more a viable commercial crop in Afghanistan than they were in 2010, when the $34 million program got started, according to a government-funded evaluation of the effort this year.
It doesn't help that they don't like the taste (or lack thereof) either.
tridim
(45,358 posts)2. Soy is crap food anyway. Good call Afghanis.
Now, if only America knew the truth about soy, and the hundreds of other pseudo-foods that corporations have assured us are healthy.
safeinOhio
(32,527 posts)3. Men, do not eat soy.
Ok for women, not men. It lowers you T levels.