RUBBER SUPPLIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 December 1943, Page 4

RUBBER SUPPLIES

VALUE OF THE NATURAL PRODUCT EMPHASISED BY AMERICAN SCIENTIST ANTICIPATED POST-WAR DEVELOPMENT The belief that production of natural rubber in the Americas can survive any competition from the new synthetic rubber industry or from low-paid labour in crude rubber production outside the Western Hemisphere after the war is expressed by Dr Earl N. Bressman, director of the newly established Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences at Turrialba, Costa Rica.

Interviewed in Washington, Dr Bressman said millions of young rubber trees already are growing in the tropical Americas and that research stations are producing strains of blightresistant and higher-yielding rubber trees.

He expects “fully mature plantations of high-yielding rubber trees to produce rubber at 10 cents a pound or less.”

Expressing his views in an article released for publication by the Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Dr Bressman said: “Actual prices for synthetic rubber, taking into consideration the contemplated large-scale production and the benefits to be expected from research during the next few years, will be around 30 cents a pound for synthetic rubber from petroleum and about 40 cents for the same product from grain.” • (The pre-Pearl Harbour price of crude rubber in the United States was 17J- cents a pound). “I have faith in the ability of American rubber growers to hold their own, once they get well started with improved strains of rubber trees,” he said. “I believe the costs of growing natural rubber in the Western Hemisphere can be reduced beyond anything which has been demonstrated before. And, in that firm belief, I am hoping that natural rubber will have full opportunity to prove its capacity to survive, whether the competition comes from the ingenious chemist or producers able to draw upon large reservoirs of low-paid labour outside the Western Hemisphere.” “SYNTHETIC” GETS HEADLINES He said that “synthetic rubber has out-rated natural rubber in the headlines,” adding: “This results partly from the controversy over production of synthetic rubber, whether it should be made of grain or oil, whether we should aim for capacity to make a million tons of synthetic rubber or half that amount. While this controversy draws the headlines, millions of young rubber trees grow in the sun of the tropical Americas. These are the vanguards of the new plantation industry, the plantation industry which I believe will be able in the long run to stand the test of survival.” He points out that “fifteen of the Latin-American countries, together with the United States, are active participants in the inter-American effort to bring rubber back home and to place it upon a solid economic foundation. CO-ORDINATED RESEARCH “The United States Department of Agriculture, in collaboration with the tropical Americas, is carrying on research for the improvement of plant materials and for commercial stimulation of existing strains resistant to leaf blight as well as high yielding strains. In the 100 co-operative nurseries established in the other Americas, nearly 30,000,000 budded trees already have been produced. These are material for the plantation industry. Five experiment stations, strategically located, are making available scientific research and guidance for development of plantations, small and large. The Institute of Agricultural Sciences is preparing to take an active hand in this programme, in collaboration with experiment stations of the other countries.” Dr Bressman said that while the important thing now is To get rubber—“we must get it from any and every source available, natural and synthetic, as quickly as possible” —it is still “worth while to examine now the challenging question: Are we to rely for the long range upon natural or synthetic rubber?” . AVAILABLE SOURCES “I am assuming,” he said, “that in the post-war period we shall want.to rely —certainly more than before the war upon nearby sources of rubber. That will mean natural rubber from the tropical Americas or synthetic rubber from plants now rising in the United States. Perhaps these in combination will be the answer.” He predicted that rubber consumption in the United States eventually would be 1.500,000 tons annaully—compared with 775,000 tons used in the peak year of 1941. Saying that there were possibilities of developing “small unit plantations” for the production of rubber —such as the family-operated rubber farms in operation under the Haitian-American Agricultural Development Corporation —Dr Bressman said: “Even if the raw material were to cost nothing, it seems illogical to expect that synthetic rubber could be polymerised (mixed) out of either alcohol or petroleum in a city factory, paying high taxes and wages, overhead and so forth, at a price comparable to that involved in the production of natural rubber, which is an ideal small-family industry. “Although there are some large plantings, like those of Goodyear in Costa Rica and Ford in Brazil,” he said, “in the future local farmers in those countries will be encouraged to make small plantings of a few acres and to utilise the large plantations and the co-operative experiment stations of the United States Department of Agriculture as sources of planting material.”