CRUDE RUBBER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 March 1942, Page 4

CRUDE RUBBER

SUPPLIES MAY BE GOT FROM BRAZIL RETURN TO THE TAPPING OF WILD TREES. MOTOR COMPANY DEVELOPING PLANTATION. AKRON, Ohio, January 2. Wild rubber trees in the Amazon Valley were suggested by Harvey S. Firestone, Junr., as an emergency source of crude rubber for the United States. Mr Firestone said in a broadcast that it has been estimated there are about 300,000,000 wild rubber trees deep in the Brizilian jungles which might be utilised to replace the sources of supplyin the Middle East. The Brazilian trees “have not been tapped because the price of rubber is lower than the price needed to provide an incentive to the natives to blaze the jungle trails to tap the wild rubber trees and bring the rubber to market,” Mr Firestone stated. Mr Firestone referred to Japanese attacks on the Middle East as “an attempt to slow the wheels of American industry,” called upon consumers to co-operate in the conservation of their tires, and to “accept rationing as necessary.” In reporting Mr Firestone’s observations the “Christian Science Monitor” says rubber experts report that the Amazon Valley once was the sole source of crude rubber, the industry there reaching its peak in 1912 with shipments of 45,000 tons. The shipments dwindled to nothing with the development of cultivated rubber in Sumatra, Java and Malaya. Industry spokesmen say a price of about 35 cents a pound probably would provide sufficient incentive. Crude rubber has been pegged at 22£ cents. Synthetics generally range above 35 cents a pound.

PRODUCTION IN BRAZIL. Realising that if rubber could be cultivated in the Western hemisphere the United States would have a storehouse of the vital product at its back door, the Ford Motor Company obtained a concession of 2,500,000 acres in Brazil in 1927. When much of the original plantation proved unsuitable, Ford men cut a new plantation from thick jungle at Belterra, high up on an almost inaccessible plateau. Today 3,651,000 rubber trees have been planted there. The plantations are now in production on a limited scale. In 1942 they will ship about 750 tons of creamed latex to Dearborn. Each year, as more trees reach full growth, production will increase. By 1950, it is estimated, annual production will be 7,500 tons. The eventual goal is a production of 38,000 tons, the approximate annual rubber requirement of the Ford Company. Specialists of the Department of Agriculture and American rubber companies periodically have visited the plantations to study the methods developed by Ford men. Using buddings of high yielding clones supplied by the plantations, these specialists now are establishing experimental plantations in the countries around the Caribbean Sea.

The one factor now limiting a more rapid increase in producton in the Amazon Valley is the labour supply. Brazil is a sparsely settled country and even high wages and the construction of model communities to house workers have failed to attract sufficient Brazilian labour to the remote jungle area where the plantations are located. The 20 million dollar Ford project in the jungle vastnesses of the Amazon Valley was the first serious attempt ever made to cultivate rubber in the Western Hemisphere, original home of the rubber tree. In the last century, when Brazil was the sole source of rubber, the product was obtained simply by tapping trees which grew wild. Then seeds were smuggle out of Brazil and taken to the Far East, where they were cultivated by scientific methods in a climate more conducive to quick growth. The primitive Brazilian rubber industry was unable to compete with the productive trees of the Orient.