NOTES 53 China is the second major producer, its production is comparatively much lower. The other traditional soya-consuming countries largely depend on imports. Soyabean is also the number one product among the US agricultural exports. About half the crop is exported as bean, meal and oil. As a matter of fact, soya oil has been the major component of all PL-480 food grants to countries around the world. Again, in the wake of the explosive concern for 'protein malnutrition5 all over the world, technologies for making various protein formulations with soyabean have also been standardised there. For instance, in recent years, particularly since the time of the Bihar famine, the American relief agency (CARE) has been supplying substantial free gifts of corn-soya-skim milk (CSM), processed by various agencies in the USA, for school-feeding in India. CSM has been supplied to other countries also; by June 1970, about half a million tonnes had been shipped to various countries around the world. "At present soyabean protein outranks all the other proposed supplements in the worldwide nutrition programme." Within the United States, soyabean-processing is naturally a substantial industry. It is the major source of all vegetable fats in that country, and the extracted meal or flour, with its high protein content (about 50 per cent) and usually in combination with corn (maize), goes for making animal feed. Besides, soya protein has been formulated into an impressive array of new luxury products, like textured protein, vegetable meat, protein drinks and biscuits. Promotion of Soyabean The promotion of soyabean in India, though not natively grown to any significant extent, has to be seen in the above background. The main arguments in its promotion have been that it could be grown in India with profit, that its yield was very high (higher than, say, groundnut), that because of its high protein content it could go a long way in solving the protein problem, and that it could also concurrently solve the oil famine in the country. A legume and somewhat similar to our pulses in being a high-pro tein foodgrain (in fact, it contains nearly double the amount of protein found in pulses), unlike pulses, it is also an oil seed (like groundnut), containing about 20 per cent of oil. The approximate comparative composition of the three are as follows : Oil Protein Food (per cent) (per cent) Soyabean 20 40 Groundnut (seeds) 40 25 Various pulses 1-2 20-24 The hints given by foreign experts were readily siezed upon and various 'researches5 in soyabean were duly undertaken.