Rubber Growing in England
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Rubber Can Be Produced Synthetically or from Latex. There Are Several Sources of the Latter Which Have Been Proved Practical. Great Britain Could Probably Be Self-supporting in Respect of Its Rubber Needs
By " Azote "
BILL plucked savagely at a dandelion that had protruded its head through the fence from the neglected, weed infested garden beyond. "Growing your own tyres, I see! " he remarked sourly, as his neighbour slouched into sight. "Millions of dandelions you must have over there."
The untidy looking neighbour ignored Bill's remark, and he glanced down at the dandelion he still held in his hand. He noted that a milk-like fluid was oozing from the broken end of the stalk.
"That must be the 'latex' the Brains Trust talks about," he murmured thoughtfully, " and some of its members reckon it will make rubber. If it does," he went on savagely, "the chap next door has made a fortune." And be went indoors to read a bit more about the subject.
The milk-like fluid referred to above was rubber latex. The hundreds of members of the dandelion family are all more-or-less-efficient manufacturers of rubber.
Unfortunately, it has been found that the efficiency of the British dandelion is too low for economic exploitation. Not so, however, the Russian family, which is a large one; several of its members have been pressed into the natural-rubber business.
Chief Rubber producing Plant Kok-sagyz is the name of the head of the Russian family of dandelions, so far as rubber is concerned. Its comparatively small yield in the wild state has been improved and is now between 14 and 30 per cent. This compares with 38 per cent, in the case of the hevea brasiliensis, the rubber tree of the Far East plantations, but it must be remembered that the demand for national autarchy in the U.S.S.R. transcends that of the " economics " of our economic system.
The kok-sagyz was discovered some 10 or 11 years ago in the forests of the Tian-Shan mountains of Central Asia. Both its seeds and its roots produce a satisfactory latex. It has been successfully transplanted to many localities of varying climatic conditions, and it is stated that it flourishes in regions as far north as Archangel.
The Government of the U.S.S.R. wasted no time, and experimental and development work went on alongside production. In one section, the Ukraine, the yield of rubber-bearing seeds was increased in 1940 from 9.43 to 24.1 kilograms per acre on one-year plantations. By selective breeding, the rubber-bearing root has been increased from 3 to 4 grams to 18 to 20 grams. The method of extracting the rubber from the roots was formerly by crushing the whole plant, but it is now such as to obviate this crushing. Instead, an incision is made in the root through which the latex exudes, and collects on the surface of the soil. When this latex is removed the flow starts afresh, and the process can be repeated some eight to 10 times in a season; by this means production has been doubled.
The area under cultivation has grown by leaps and bounds and by 1942 there were 625,000 acres of kok-sagyz under cultivation. In addition, latexsbearing plants of the dandelion and other families are under cultivation to an unstated extent. Among these plants are the tau-sagyz, teke-sagyz, krim-sagyz, hondrella, beresklet, the •Chinese encomiya and the South American guayule. Incidentally, this rubber-producingplant cultivation has become a •most profitable source of income to the collective farmers of Russia.
The success attained in Russia with the kok-sagyz plant, as regards adaptability • to widely varying climatic conditions, suggested the possibility of its acclimatization in this country, when the rubber position of the Allies became desperate, early last year. Generously our Russian ally extended a helping hand, and seeds of the koksagyz were 'flown to this country.
Kew Can Again Do a Key Job As seeds of the hevea brasiliensis were taken and germinated by the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, so have the ltissian seeds also gone there for germination. The result of that first rubber experiment at Kew was the foundation of an industry with a world market of over a million and a quarter tons of rubber in 1940, to the value of £140,000,000, a wonderful acquisition to the Empire.
The hope of the present intervention of Kew is that of helping to establish the possibility of growing rubber in our own back gardens, as it were, instead of having to cart it many thousands of miles from the Far East. The germinated seeds from Kew, as seedlings, are now planted out in the open to test their power to withstand our English winter.
Of our Far Eastern exports of natural rubber—latex—the U.S.A. was a customer to the extent of 60 per cent. With regard to the future of that market, two points need consideration, and they are ominous ones for the rubber plantations.
The first in importante to-day is that the U.S.A. has learnt the lesson that a distance of 12,000 miles is too far to fetch the raw materials for tyres. The second is that it remembers that. the price of rubber has fluctuated between 0.102 and 2.07 dollars; it has commented on this fact in no uncertain terms, contending that costs of production cannot possibly fluctuatein the ratio of 1 to 20, and that the conclusion to be arrived at was a sinister one. It has tried growing rublsber itself and attempts have been made in the Monroe-doctrine countries of Central and South America, but, up to the present, have failed to break the stranglehold.
Hevea brasiliensis, quayule, cactus and several other kinds of plant have taken part in these American developments which are still going on, and have been greatly accelerated as a result of the war, that is, so far as acceleration can be applied to rubber growing. It must be remembered that a rubber tree cannot be tapped until it is seven years old, although these conditions in relation to the shrub plants are not so severe.
U.S.A. Sets Store by Synthesis The jubilation about rubber that is' noticeable in America, however, is not due to any success in its natural-rubber adventures, but to the marvellous possibilities that have opened up from the discoveries and developments in synthetic rubber from crude petroleum as a raw material. Americans foresee a break away from the stranglehold of the British Stevenson Plan, which they viewed as a scheme to restore rubber prices to a high level.
America undoubtedly holds the joker, so far as the future of rubber is concerned; its decision will most certainly be " never again! "
With 60 per cent of its output demand thus wiped out, what will be the position of the Far Eastern rubber plantations?, Will they become bankrupt and go out of business, or will they try and corner a protected market in this country? That would be a sorry day for our motor-tyre users, who would have to pay greatly enhanced prices for their tyres. Would any Government dare to adopt such a policy for the small section of rubber growers, when the Americans, with their developed synthetic rubber, would be able to wipe Far Eastern rubber right ,out of the market?
There have been two bogies concerning synthetic rubber—one high cost and the other poor quality. Recent synthetic production, using some of the newer ipolymers, has laid the bogy of poor quality; there are as good tyres produced to-day in the U.S.A. as were ever made from natural rubber, and the quality is slowly but surely improving. Indeed, there are points on which it is definitely superior to natural rubber.
Synthetic rubber has not had sufficient volume of production to make it possible, or worth while economically, to undertake real technical development. Now that the economic bar has been forcibly removed by the action of Japan, and volume of production must perforce be undertaken, whether it be economic or uneconomic to do so, the technical development and improvement of the material will automatically proceed in relation to the volume.
With regard to cost, the fact of volume production alone guarantees that this matter will automatically improve; besides which, the same brains that improve the quality of the product will just as inevitably lower the cost. An instance of this process, already in being, is a recent announcement, by the chairman of the Standard Oil concern of New Jersey, of a discovery by which in the manufacture of 100-octane petrol, butadiene, the raw material for synthetic rubber, is a by-product, thus putting an entirely different complexion on the cost.
Thus the starting of the manufacture of synthetic rubber at any cost can hardly fail to finish up well within our notions of economics. It is tragic to reflect that it is war which forces this development, whereas in the economics of the U.S.S.R. exactly the same progress has gone on without the need for the death of thousands as an incentiye.
There are those who contend that war is not the ultimate cause, but is -a secondary product of the present world system of economics. That, however, is a subject too large to deal with, except in passing, in so far as it concerns the topic under discussion.
National Interests v. Trade Agreements Sensational things have occurred in the U.S.A. concerning rubber, as a result of Pearl Harbour and subsequent happenings. The searchlight that has been turned on to the subject has stirred up veritable hornets' nests in several quarters over there.
The Standard Oil company of New Jersey was accused of being the cause of the rubber shortage, owing to its long-standing business associations with the German 1.G. Farben Industrie, the powerful chemical group, and with which patents had been pooled, and arrangements for world-wide commercial development of widely differing chemical products had been made. The world had apparently been parcelled out into zones of interest, the German company taking certain zones and the Standard Oil the other.
The complications arising from the outbreak of war between the U.S.A. and Germany can he imagined; these complications had existed in a degree before this outbreak, through England being at war with Germany, but the new position had such appearances that national interests seemed to have been sacrificed in favour of the international trade agreements.
All this ended in an arrangement by which the Standard Oil company placed its rubber patents at the disposal of the Nation for the purposes of the war, the consequence of which was the dispersal of the accumulated Standard Oil knowledge to all the rubber and chemical companies capable of making use of it for the high-speed development of a synthetic-rubber industry, up till then non-existent to the necessary extent of the new national needs.
Then came the announcement of the Standard Oil discovery already referred to, thus setting fresh speed to the rubber rush. The effect of this discovery was, in truth, to fill in the gap, between the lasting of the rubber stocks and the reclaim possibilities, and the arrival of the new production at a sufficient volnme to take over.
This gap, until then a complete and hopeless void, contained nothing less than the possibility of the entire breakdown of military and aerial operations, the latter extending to the naval arm. The availability of 100-octane petrol in abundance was wholly negatived by the absence of the complementary requirement of rubber.
Output Will Meet All Requirements
Al] these happenings produced the apparently practical plan. to arrive at a rubber output equal to that of peacetime consumption of 600,000 tons per annum (U.S.A.) by the end of this year, which, balanced by the reserves referred to above, will meet the total requirements (estimated at 800,000 tons) by the necessary time.. The production is estimated to be up to 1,000,000 tons in 1944.
For the present the natural-rubber. experiments, being on so small a scale of production, compared with urgent immediate requirements, have fallen somewhat into the background. They are, however, being continued and increased, on the basis that every little helps. Some of the plantations are just coming into production after many years of experiment and failure.
A development of rubber production from annually recurring vegetation, as distinct from a crude-petroleum-base raw material, is something that holds importance in the future, although it can be only of comparatively minor assistance in the present emergency. Then there is the production of the necessary butadiene from alcohol, obtained from agricultural sources.
These agricultural interests have been able to impress their claims to assist in rubber production to the extent that farmers have been allotted a percentage of the production, in spite of the general contention that the alcohol way is an expensive one.
This system of production from farm crops may assume greater importance later, that is in the event of the warning, given out officially by Mr. Ickes, Controller of Petroleum, that crude supplies may commence to fail in 14 years' time, coming to pass.
It is known that the U.S.A. Government is interesting itself in the production of oil from coal, acting with the above possibility in mind, so that, should 'it materialize, both fuel and tyres will have to be made from either coal or vegetation.
All the happenings in the U.S.A., backed by the Russian developments, point to the advisability, even the necessity, or rubber production in this country from indigenous sources. On the authority of Na.unton, coal, lime and electric power are raw materials suitable for rubber manufacture. The possibilities of such production exist in this country; they require developing; of course, like everything new, but there is no fundamental reason why synthetic tubber should not be made here.
The alternative method is to make rubber from vegetation—either that which produces already manufactured rubber in the form of latex, or that from which alcohol can be obtained, which is then changed to butadiene and polymerized to rubber.
It has been stated in the U.S.A. that it would be impossible, economically, to produce the required quantities of alcohol from vegetation, because the acreage necessary would be too large. Against this we have figures given by the Russians which suggest 'that the limitations of the development of yields of desired products from vegetation are practically unknown. Some of these figures are given earlier in this article, notably thap relating to latex from the kok-sagyz; others follow.
In 1930 the first Soviet synthetic rubber was produced in a Leningrad factory. In 1935 the first factory for chloroprene rubber was laid, down, also in Leningrad. In the course of no more than 12 months the yield in terms of rubber to alcohol by weight increased from 14.4 to 23.1 per cent.
Another indication of progress is the fact that alcohol from cereals amounted to 260 lb. per acre, whereas, by a change over to potatoes, the yield became 3,500 lb. per acre.
Other comparative figures, bearing upon efficiency increase, are those referring to the respective productions of synthetic rubber from alcohol, and natural rubber. In 1935, one acre of potatoes produced 660 lb. of rubber, whereas one acre of rubber trees (hevea brasiliensis) produced only 320 lb.
Synthetic Output Much Higher per Man On the labour side, a syntheticplant worker produces 20 times as much rubber in a day as a native in a rubber plantation.
All these matters have a beating, more dr less direct, on the home growing of rubber. Of its desirability in war-time there is no shadow of doubt.
One of the most significant pronouncements of recent times was that of the Minister of Agriculture when he broadcast that, in a few years, England would be in a position to reed itself.
Leading in the same direction is the power given into the hands of the Ministry of Fuel and Power. This Department undoubtedly knows that the fuels available in this country render a similar statement possible.
The subject of the vegetable raw material for the manufacture of our own rubber also comes within the. purview of the Minister of Agriculture. Let us hope that his efforts in selecting information untainted by 'vested interests, or emanating from. " can't be done" sources, will lead him to sponsor the institution of rubbei farms about the country, and possibly—like the backyard poultry—oven a " rubber patch" in everyman's garden.