Sisal on the Ropes

Personally, I prefer one-inch sisal for the job. You get too many blisters on your hands from nylon.

That unsolicited testimonial comes from Rhodesia's retired hangman, Edward ("The Dropper") Milton, and it is in praise of the fiber extracted from a cactus-like plant that grows mostly in Africa and Latin America. Not everyone, however, feels the same affection for sisal. Though it is still used in rope, twine, potato sacks and carpets, sisal is being steadily replaced by nylon and other synthetics. Its last bastion is agricultural twine, which now accounts for 75% of world sisal production.

Though sisal-producing countries have managed to keep total output fairly constant in recent years, about 660,000 tons annually, they have had to slash their prices to maintain their markets. From $700 a ton in the early 1950s, sisal has sunk to its present $168 level, which makes it hardly worth harvesting at all. And there is no hope of reversing the trend. The time-honored tactic of withholding the product from the market to drive up its price would only backfire, sending an even larger share of potential sales to synthetic fibers.

Quiet Advice. The country hardest hit by sisal's decline is Tanzania, the world's foremost producer, which supplies 35% of the world market, or about 220,000 tons a year. Last year, when Tanzania nationalized sisal plantations in an attempt to control its traditional No. 1 crop, scores of white settlers were left without compensation. Now the Socialists in Dar es Salaam are quietly advising some ex-sisal farmers that they can have their plantations back. The government has decided that it is better, after all, for the individual entrepreneur to lose money than for it to take a beating in its budget. Sisal used to be Tanzania's largest export earner: it brought in $61 million as recently as 1964. With slipping prices, the fibers accounted for only $36 million by 1967. Even at that, Tanzania has admitted that it has been losing $17 on every ton of sisal sold.

World prices of sisal are expected to continue their decline and possibly level off by 1970 at about $150 a ton. Meanwhile, Tanzania hopes to develop new uses for its threatened crop. To that end, a consortium of Canadian and European banks has invested some $28 million in a mill to turn sisal into paper pulp. In neighboring Kenya, the world's fourth largest sisal producer, experiments aimed at producing fodder and fertilizer from sisal fibers are under way. Other leading sisal producers, including Brazil and Haiti, have agreed to pool their resources to promote their produce against the steady inroads of the synthetics.

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