Chemurgy: 1943

The war, changing the U.S. farm problem from surplus to shortage, has also reversed the chemurgy-movement. For eight years the National Farm Chemurgic Council has tried to solve the farm problem by promoting diversified crops of use to industry. But today the farmer needs manpower, not new markets. It is industry that needs chemurgy, not the farmer. Without agricultural help, rubber, alcohol and explosives programs would be facing disaster.

The ninth Chemurgic Conference of Agriculture, Industry and Science, meeting in Chicago last fortnight, changed its outlook without blinking. The veteran farm crusaders were absent or silent. Research men from major industries--rubber, alcohol, paints and varnish, plastics--dominated the scene with talk of shortages, grim calculations. Hopes were stirred by such performances as that of the soybean industry, a recent problem child of chemurgy, which now crushes ten million bushels of beans monthly, expects a crop of 175 million bushels in 1943 and the export of a billion pounds of soy flour and grits under Lend-Lease.

Rubber. The easing of the rubber shortage was itself an ironic triumph for chemurgy. Synthetic rubber tires, with almost all their rubber derived from alcohol, are now rolling into service. Yet the greatest fiasco of the chemurgic movement had been the 1937 investment of $275,000 of Chemical Foundation funds in a 10,000-gallon-a-day alcohol plant of the Atchison Agrol Co. at Atchison, Kans. This was an effort to introduce a motor fuel containing 10% alcohol. It was successful in using surplus grain but unsuccessful in competition with gasoline, and closed after a year. Today the plant is in expanded operation, making alcohol for rubber, explosives and war chemicals.

Alcohol. The present demand for grain alcohol is a great problem for chemurgists. Production in 1943 will amount to 530 million gallons, more than five times the prewar figure. With imports of molasses cut off by the lack of tankers, corn is the major source. The entire production would require 200 million bushels of corn a year. At that rate the Commodity Credit Corp. cannot long continue to supply the corn, and farmers want to use their excess stock to feed the 13 million increase in the U.S. pig population. Again munitions compete with food.

Turning to the 1 1/4-billion-bushel wheat surplus as a source of alcohol is no remedy now. There are unsolved technical difficulties in the use of wheat: for instance, unlike corn, wheat does not now provide a valuable cattle feed as a by-product of its fermentation. WPB is studying the possibility of making alcohol from waste wood and even from waste sulfite liquor from paper mills. Farmers are begging to be relieved of the alcohol and rubber burdens,* praying for petroleum rubber to make its appearance, a complete reversal of their insistence a year ago on being included in the rubber program.

Other Plant Rubbers. On the opening day of the conference Rubber Director William M. Jeffers in Washington announced the curtailment of one of chemurgy's pet projects, the culture of guayule in the Salinas River Valley, Calif. The 50,000 acres already planted should produce 20,000 tons of natural rubber by the end of 1944, but the plan for 100,000 additional acres, perhaps 500,000 acres later, is now abandoned. Food is needed more than rubber, and is more profitable to the farmer.

The curtailment of guayule culture strikes the best source of natural U.S. rubber, capable of producing 400 Ib. an acre a year. There is no current hope for rubber from any of the thousands of other rubber-bearing plants that have been studied. Cornell's Dr. Lewis Knudson has tried some 30 himself, says "No native plant can be recommended at present as a source of rubber." Swamp milkweed may yield 45 Ib. an acre; golden rod, 75 Ib.; Indian hemp not more than 25 Ib. The Russian dandelion (kok-sagyz), seeds of which were rushed to the U.S. from the U.S.S.R. a year ago, contains rubber of good quality, easily separated from the root, but farm labor shortage makes its cultivation impracticable.

Milkweed Floss. The conference did discuss two newly valuable plants, both weeds: milkweed and cattails. The floss from the pods of the common milkweed is a fine cellulose tube inclosing sealed air. It retains remarkable buoyancy for weeks, is an excellent insulator. As a suit lining it can keep a man afloat in water, can protect aviators against cold. It is also useful for industrial insulation and soundproofing.

Sponsor of the floss, and inventor of the machines for processing it, is mild, spectacled Dr. Boris Berkman, onetime director of the Pasteur Institute in Moscow, for 20 years a surgeon on the staff of Chicago's Grant Hospital. He discovered one value of milkweed during a study of soil erosion. Its root system allows it to thrive on soil that is worthless for other use, and it binds the soil instead of breaking it. One million pounds of the floss could be collected from wild growth on marginal land in Emmet County, Mich, alone.

Dr. Berkman sees milkweed as a permanent, profitable crop which can supplant Java kapok now and after the war.

It has many other possibilities. The stalk contains 10-20% of a fiber that is superior to cotton and linen intensile strength, second only to Manila hemp. In addition, milkweed seed contains 21% of a semi-drying oil almost identical with soybean oil, and the oil-free seed cake is a valuable livestock feed with 40% protein content.

* The word was coined in 1934 by Dow Chemical Co.'s Dr. William Jay Hale in his book, The Farm Chemurgic. The "urgy" comes from the Greek word ergon -- work. Chemurgy was intended to mean "chemistry at work," hence to cover the whole chemical industry. The industry has ignored the word, but its wholehearted adoption by the National Farm Chemurgic Council has given it an agricultural context: the production-and-use of farm products for chemical industry.

* Reason: The ceiling price for corn is $1.02 a bushel, but when converted to pork a bushel of corn brings $1.25 to $1.50. Postwar note: the price of corn must be below 35-c- a bushel if alcohol is to be made from it at the normal prewar price of 20-c- a gallon.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.