(2 of 2)
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¢ a bushel if alcohol is to be made from it at the normal prewar price of 20¢ a gallon.