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Show Marketing Manager for Standard Oil Co. Reports on Gains of Petrochemical Industry Chemicals derived from oil an (J natural r;is are proving a tremendous tre-mendous boon to I). S. fanners in their ceaseless fight against the woods, worms and posts which cause crop loss up to $l.r billion a year, according to Jack I Todd of the Southern Utah Oil Industry information committee. Not many people give much consideration to the tremendous fight which farmers have on their hands constantly with these agricultural pests, Mr. Todd, who is manager for marketing for Standard Oil Co. of California, pointed out. The insect is so populous pop-ulous that some estimates place the adds as high as oOO.OOt) to one against the farmer. The petrochemical industry is one of the latter-day wonders of the petroleum industry he said. In the last 20 years, it has mushroomed mush-roomed from virtually nothing to a multi-million dollar industry, currently it accounts for about 2tr'o of all chemicals produced in this country, and experts agree that this figure will go perhaps to 50'yj within the next decade, Mr. Todd continued. He said oil and agricultural experts estimate that 73 million gallons of petroleum derivatives are required annually for just chemical insecticides as solvents or as vehicles for DDT, pyre-thrum, pyre-thrum, fluorine compounds, benzene ben-zene hoAachlorido, lindane and numerous other bug killing pro ducts. New chemicals such as "DDT" can go a long way toward restoring restor-ing the land that has been ravaged ra-vaged by wire-worms. These particular par-ticular pets, in the past, have destroyed de-stroyed millions of acres of farm land. If any one factor, can he cited as the one which played a major ma-jor role in the development of this new industry it is research, Mr. Todd said. At the turn of the century you could almost count the number of chemists working on petroleum research on one hand. Today there are more than 17,000 and constant streams of new men and new Ideas are rolling roll-ing out of our colleges and universities. uni-versities. The petroleum industry right now is investing more than $10 l million a year in research the kitid that improves current products pro-ducts and keeps a constant supply sup-ply of new ones flowing onto the j market. This research unquestionably unques-tionably will benefit not only the S farmer, but every American as well. |
