Chemurgic Southwest

Oklahoma's tall, beaming Governor Robert Samuel Kerr, former oilman, called a "clinic" last week to study possible new industrial crops for southwestern farms. In three days of talk, more than 700 experts and farmers got many new perspectives. Among them:

P:Mechanical cotton pickers are already successful, mechanical cultivators are being developed, mechanization of cotton culture seems inevitable. So does diversification. Special varieties of cotton may be grown for seed and oil, others for linters to feed the rayon industry, which may thus become an ally rather than a competitor of cotton.

P:The Department of Agriculture's Daniel F. J. Lynch of New Orleans announced that peanut oil now makes a good substitute for olive oil in salads, mayonnaise and for industrial uses. Peanut proteins already have a big new market in a glue for paper and wood. In Georgia, the peanut crop is already close to cotton in value, may soon pass it, may even compete with soybeans for commercial interest.

P:Other suggestions for industrial crops: japan wax and lacquer from the poison oak of southern swamplands; sugar and byproducts from the neglected southwestern maple tree; storax for perfumes and flavors from the sweet gum tree; yellow dyes from the Osage orange or hedge apple.

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