World’s biggest business in '41 was government payrolls
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The Pittsburgh Press (February 27, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SALINAS, California – Congress, the last time I looked, was about to pass a revised bill for getting us started immediately on rubber production from the guayule bush.
The bill calls for buying out the Intercontinental Rubber Co., which knows all that is known about guayule, and for planting 75,000 acres of it anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
A good portion of this planting will be in the United States, and it will set farmers to raising guayule – probably under government contract – all the way from California to Georgia.
However, there is only enough seed in America for planting about 45,000 acres the first year.
There are two ways to grow guayule – one is long and roundabout, and one is quick.
The roundabout method is normally the most efficient, so it is the only one that Intercontinental has experimented with. This consists of sowing the guayule seed in seedbeds, tending it carefully for a year, then transplanting it to the fields, and then letting it grow from four to seven years before harvesting.
The other method is a yearly harvest, just like wheat. Some scientists say this is the only way to handle it in an emergency such as the present. Of course, the rubber yield is smaller per acre this way, but if you plant enough acres you get your rubber.
There’s catch to both methods
Under the long-term method, they get as high as 2850 pounds of rubber per acre. By the one-year method, they can get up to 1000 pounds per acre.
The catch to both methods right now, however, is that there is only enough seed to plant 45,000 acres, which is only a drop in the bucket to what we must have. Years must pass before we can create enough seed for colossal, wholesale growing of guayule.
If you can stomach a few figures, I’ll try to show you what our guayule rubber outlook is.
If we planted all our available seed this year and harvested it next year, we’d get only 1500 tons of rubber (and our annual consumption is 650,000 tons!).
If we planted this year and waited till 1946 to harvest, we’d let about 21,300 tons of rubber from it (and our annual needs would still be 650,000 tons!).
However, we could create new seed very fast, and by 1944 we’d have enough seed to plant 4,500,000 acres of guayule. Theoretically, this vast acreage could yield 150,000 tons of rubber if harvested in 1945, or 540,000 tons in 1946, or 2,130,000 tons in 1947.
But something tells me the war will be nearly over by 1947.
Thrives on poorer lands
Monterey County here has been found to be the best place in the United States, considering soil and climate, for raising guayule. Salinas is called the “lettuce capital of America.” Its good black soil has brought vegetable renown to California, and here the migrant Okies and the Jap farmers have helped make fame both good and bad for the state.
But guayule doesn’t grow well in this good black vegetable soil. It’s too hardy a plant for that. It grows best on the poorer lands. Monterey County has those, too. They say that about 50,000 acres are available in this county for growing guayule.
So you see that the Salinas vicinity, despite its A-1 rating for guayule growing, can’t handle the whole thing if we really go into it. Guayule must be raised in Arizona and New Mexico and Texas and other southern states as well.
Mills will have to be built all over the country. Farmers will have to be taught how to tend their new strange crop, which looks like a field of brush.
And should we ever get up to an acreage of 4,500,000 – which would finally supply all our own rubber – do you have any idea how much acreage that is? Well, it’s just half the acres that are planted to cotton each year in Texas alone!
