PRODUCTION AND CONSERVATION OF FATS AND OILS. 25 
An appreciable part of the germs used for making corn oil is derived 
from the Dianufacture of brewers' grits. With the decrease in the 
consumption of brewers' grits, the amount of corn oil made in the 
United States would materially decrease were it not for the growth 
in glucose, starch, and degerminated corn meal production. 
SOY BEAN OIL. 
GROWING IMPORTANCE. 
Soy bean oil to-day stands at the head of our list of imports of 
foreign fats and oils. During the twelve months ending Decem- 
ber 30, 1912, we imported a little less than 25,000,000 pounds, 
valued at about $1,000,000, but in the calendar year 1917 nearly 
265,000,000 pounds, at a cost of about $27,000,000, an increase of 
approximately 1,100 per cent in quantity and more than 2,700 per 
cent in value. Besides the crude oil imported in 1917, some 
34,000,000 pounds of the dry beans were brought here from eastern 
Asia. The major portion was sold to oil mills, a small quantity 
being used for canning and other purposes. The domestic produc- 
tion of soy bean oil in 1917 is reported to the United States Food 
Administration as 42,000,000 pounds. 
It is estimated that 750,000 acres of soy beans were planted in 
the United States in 1917, which is about three times the acreage 
of 1916. Only a small portion of the planting was allowed to seed, 
however, most of it being cut for hay. Very few, if any, of the 
domestic beans were crushed by the oil mills, which used as raw 
material the Manchurian beans, as being cheaper and in less demand 
by bean canners than those grown in this country. In 1915, how- 
ever, some 100,000 bushels of American soy beans were pressed, 
and the cake and oil from them were consumed in this country. 
GROWING SOY BEANS. 
Of the more than 500 known varieties of the soy bean which have 
been grown on the Government testing farms, at present only about 
15 are handled commercially by seed men. The Mammoth (yellow), 
the standard late variety, is probably more extensively grown than 
any other. It is most important that the variety best suited to 
the locality where it is to be cultivated be selected. Also where the 
beans are to be used for oil those varieties which will yield the maxi- 
mum amount of oil per acre should, of course, be planted, if they 
wall mature a good crop. 
The oil content of soy beans varies from 14 to as high as 21 per 
cent, in a few varieties, the average being about 17 per cent. Tests 
made by the Ohio Experiment Station with 25 varieties, planted 
for five successive years, but not on the same plot each year, gave 
yields of from 14 to 36.5 bushels per acre, the average being 30 
bushels. Similar experiments in Connecticut with 13 different 
