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Show Farm Product Research Brightens Rural Picture Government Chemurgic Laboratories Seek Mew Outlets for Raw Materials Of U. S. Agriculture. - 'I'-ft 4"JW . ' By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WNU Service, 1395 National Press BIdg., Washington, D. C. From four strategic points in the United States members of the department de-partment of agriculture are looking into the future and slowly and carefully care-fully planning the way toward new uses of the product of field and farm. They are the men directing the work in the new laboratories of the bureau of chemistry and engineering. engi-neering. The layman who takes a quick look over the shoulders of these men may get a little dizzy. As I sat in the office of one of them taking notes with a pencil he had just handed me', labeled "U. S. Dept." Agr. Soybean-Phenolic Plastic" I had difficulty keeping down to earth. I saw the cornfields of my native state suddenly producing the fuel of tomorrow, I saw husks and cobs running farm and factory machinery machin-ery and automobiles, and cornstalks turning into paper. Plants and vegetables from the farms of the nation became all sorts of gadgets from airplane parts to ash trays, a gallon of milk turned into a lady's dress, a pumpkin into a limousine. At this point I was taken by the hand and led gently back to earth. I was reminded that "chemurgy," which is what the modern Aladdins call their art, is still in the list of "new words" in the dictionary. I looked it up. Chemurgy, I found, means "that branch of applied chemistry devoted to industrial utilization uti-lization of raw materials, especially farm products, as use of soybean oil in paints and varnishes, and of southern pine for paper pulp." Attack Surplus Problem. That definition by no means gives the true picture of what the four with. In the South, at New Orleans, cotton and peanuts are the main interest. in-terest. Perhaps the best way to sum up what is being done right now is to quote the men in charge of the different dif-ferent laboratories: "Cotton overcoats for sheep," was the first thing mentioned by D. F. M. Lynch, director of the southern laboratory. "We're co-operating with the agricultural ag-ricultural experiment station of the University of Wyoming." Said Mr. Lynch, "Sheepmen in that state put some of these cotton coverings on sheep last year and found that the wool-grew better and It was much' cleaner at shearing time. This year we sent them 500 coats. They're being put on the sheep just about now to be left on until warm weather. If coats were put on all our sheep it would result in a market mar-ket for 100,000 bales of cotton a year." Pacific Lab Objectives. Mr. T. L. Swenson from the Pacific Pa-cific coast says: "We're to study alfalfa, apples and other fruits, potatoes, po-tatoes, poultry and poultry products, vegetables and wheat." And he is co-operating with the frozen-pack laboratory, located in Seattle. "One thing we did recently, recent-ly, Mr. Swenson told us, "was to prepare an entire dinner of frozen-pack frozen-pack foods including chicken stuffed with frozen dressing." In the Philadelphia laboratory. Dr. P. A. Wells is in charge: "One of the things we are working on is apples," he reports, "better ways of making apple juice for the market." mar-ket." And tobacco new nicotine compounds com-pounds to kill insects and prevent laboratories of the department of agriculture are doing. In the first place it is necessary to point out that the government chemists are confining their research efforts to farm surpluses and to what is now waste. They are bending their efforts ef-forts to discover new uses for farm products rather than trying to develop de-velop products, to compete with present markets. The objective, reduced re-duced to purely material terms, is more cash for what the farmer raises. The decision of the congress of the United States in 1938 to vote $4,000,000 for these four laboratories to carry on this research was not a sudden thing. It was the gradual realization that in this changing world, new conditions have proved that making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, will not solve the farm problem. International trade restrictions, wars and rumors of wars, revolutions revolu-tions both economic and political, have conspired to create great surpluses sur-pluses of farm products. The job today is to find new markets for those products. It is a long-range job. Dr. Henry Knight, chief of the bureau bu-reau of agricultural chemistry and engineering, describes the function of his new organization as a combination combi-nation of three kinds of research. One is finding new facts about the substances he is dealing with. That is the kind of thing that goes on in the laboratory of the professor of physics. Another is improving and controlling the quality of a product and lowering the cost of its manufacture. manu-facture. That is the kind of research re-search a manufacturing concern carries on. Then there is the thfrd type of experimentation ex-perimentation which an Industry developing de-veloping new products follows, the attempt to discover and develop methods for processing or combining combin-ing various raw materials to produce pro-duce useful products. Wider Markets Sought. "These are the three basic types of research," says Dr. Knight, "which will be employed in the four regional laboratories to find new and wider markets for the farm commodities com-modities assigned to them." These four laboratories are located locat-ed in four areas in which four different dif-ferent types of farm products dominate. dom-inate. In the western laboratory in Albany Al-bany on San Francisco bay, fruits and vegetables and alfalfa are the chief concern. The eastern laboratory labora-tory is in Philadelphia. Here tobacco to-bacco and milk products are studied. stud-ied. The northern laboratory is at Peoria, 111., where corn and wheat are the chief commodities dealt piam diseases, mix is anotner study in the East making better casein products. Casein is used now chiefly chief-ly in paper sizing. Lard is being studied, too, and like soybeans and other products, it is valuable in making plastics. In the Peoria laboratory, corn, corn-stalks, corn cobs, are the chief interest. Their cellulose content is being studied. They have real possibilities pos-sibilities for making synthetic rubber rub-ber for example, says Director O. E. May. And motor fuel, too: "That's one of the big jobs we're going to tackle. One of the important impor-tant aspects of this problem is making mak-ing alcohol or other fermentation products from corn or wheat, and using the alcohol as a motor fuel perhaps alcohol alone, or perhaps blended with gasoline. We're setting set-ting up a pilot plant that is, a regular regu-lar alcohol-making plant on a small scale so we can study methods of making alcohol and try to improve them and cut down the cost. Washington's Foresight A Boon to Nation's Capital This year, as usual, at the season of his birthday, George Washington was lauded throughout the land for his many gifts to the nation. Few realize the role he played in creating creat-ing the capital city which is named after him. It seems today as if he actually possessed the ability to see into the future when he accepted the city plan of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the young Frenchman who had followed Lafayette to this country and distinguished dis-tinguished himself as an engineer in the Revolution. For to most of the people of that day L'Enfant's scheme was a madman's dream. The Frenchman was eccentric and he paid for his eccentricity with a death in poverty although his plan lived. Thirty-two years ago he was reburied with honor in the Arlington National cemetery. When the landowners of the acres that were to comprise the capital heard about streets of 100 to 110 feet wide and an avenue 400 feet wide and a mile long, they said L'Enfant was crazy to waste this land that might be sold as building lots. Today many Washingtonians vainly vain-ly protest when streets with a line of trees on both sides of the sidewalks side-walks are widened between curbs to allow for the congested automobile automo-bile traffic. But if it had not been for L'Enfant's planning of wide streets and the active support which he received from President Washington, Wash-ington, this widening of the pavement pave-ment today would have been impossible. impos-sible. Now, at least, one line of trees can be preserved. |