Alan Blinder, esteemed Princeton economics professor and former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, recently found himself owning up to a surprising new interest: the soyabean.

“I never knew much about soya before,” Blinder confessed on the sidelines of an economic conference in Aspen this week, as he presented his latest forecasts. “But I want to find out. Who would have ever imagined that!”

Not many people. Western policy makers and eminent economists have mostly ignored the bean, figuring it to be a rather dull agricultural crop. I never paid much attention to soya myself, associating it with hippie dishes and tofu. But last month the US government released figures showing that the country’s exports had surged in the second quarter of this year, pushing up the annualised rate of GDP growth to a heady 4.1 per cent. Part of the reason was the humble soyabean.