by Katrina Cornish spends her days raising dandelions and desert shrubs. She removes the stretchy rubbery substances they produce and uses special machines to dip them into condoms, medical gloves and parts of tracheal tubes. And she thinks those products could change the agricultural landscape in the United States forever.
Cornish, a professor at Ohio State University who studies rubber alternatives, is not the only one pouring energy into other crops such as that desert bush, guayule, or the rubber dandelions that bloom with yellow petals in the greenhouse where Cornish works. In Arizona, too, guayule thrives amid drought, its blue-green leaves plucked from dry dirt at a research and development farm operated by tire company Bridgestone. And in Nebraska and other parts of the central United States, green grasses of sorghum grow up, flowing with clusters of red grain.
It is not corn, soybeans, wheat or cotton that has dominated those fields for many years. Instead, they are crops that many companies, philanthropic organizations and national and international entities are looking at as promising options to combat climate change. But while some researchers and farmers are optimistic about the potential of these crops, many of which are more water-efficient and more important in some parts of the world to fight hunger, they also say it would require huge changes in markets. and in processing before we do. ever see fields full of these out-of-the-box plants or many products in stores made with them, especially in the United States.
Most of the rubber processing takes place overseas, and the United States is unwilling to process rubber at home. But Cornish also says that threats of disease, climate change and international trade tensions mean that working on growing and processing domestic alternatives would be a smart investment.
With sorghum, too, grown for human consumption as well as for farm animals or even pet food, processing must gradually increase, said Nate Blum, chief executive officer of Sorghum United, an international non-governmental organization focused on spread awareness. about sorghum. Although the US is the largest producer of sorghum in the world, it is still only a small fraction of the acres grown compared to commodity crops such as corn and soybeans. And while corn and soybeans have a big boost in the United States, Blum is optimistic that consumer demand will spur more investment in the sorghum and millet industry.
However, farmers are more likely to plant whatever crops receive subsidies, said James Gerber, senior scientist with the climate solutions nonprofit Drawdown Project. Gerber, who recently published a paper in Nature Food about the crops that will continue yield growth and may stagnate in the coming years, said comparing sorghum production in India and the United States shows the principle this. India has invested heavily in improving sorghum yields there, but the United States has not, he said.
However, Blum thinks there are real benefits to growing sorghum, and perhaps more pressing benefits in other parts of the world than in the United States On the heels of last year, when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the Nations announced United focus on millets including sorghum, Blum thinks there is still much more to be done. “It’s not the end of the international year. It’s just the beginning,” he said.
As climate change affects agriculture around the world, the need for crops that can withstand extreme weather such as persistent drought is particularly important in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. , where small farmers rely on a few acres of land. Some of the breeding programs for those crops are based in the United States, but they are much less part of the American diet or lifestyle.
That’s why specialty markets are going to be critical if there’s any hope of getting these crops here, Cornish said. She thinks that just as Tesla opened up the possibility of mainstream electric cars by initially marketing the product as a luxury good, high-end items like condoms, tracheal tube parts and radiation-rated surgical gloves will have to be made with dandelion and guayule to encourage producers. to grow more meaningful amounts of either of those crops.
“You can’t do it without going that route because you don’t have any economies of scale, and you don’t have to go into markets that need a lot of volume,” Cornish said.
Guayule is clearly a specialty crop and probably always will be” in terms of acres grown, said Bill Niaura, Bridgestone’s executive director of sustainable innovation. He said Bridgestone’s work on guayule has been strictly in the area of research and development for about a decade, and only in the last two years or so has the company been transitioning it into an exploratory business. “You’re trying to develop a new industry for America that doesn’t exist right now,” he said.
Meanwhile, farmers in the U.S. rely on an agricultural economy built on scale, so they farm the crops that allow them to make choices about where to sell, said Curt Covington, senior director of business institutionalized by AgAmerica Lending, a private investment manager and lender. focused on agricultural land. He added that the bankers who are financing these farmers often do not want to take the risk of a complete change to a crop that does not have established markets. That, he said, could be a problem for the country because climate change threatens crops such as cotton and alfalfa, a thirsty crop grown in the Southwest, in the future.
Farmers in Arizona have already had to fallow land, stop planting altogether and sometimes struggle with or give up on family businesses as a result of Colorado River water cuts. Although guayule uses only half as much water as cotton and alfalfa, if the economics don’t support it, that doesn’t do much good for most farmers.
“Ultimately what you end up with is you could have a lot of uncultivated land, and that same crop is being imported into this country from other countries,” Covington said. “And so to me that creates a security risk for this country. “
That’s something Cornish thinks can be prevented, she says, by reimagining the United States not as a land dominated by waves of grain, but also as a dominant producer of natural rubber.
“My job is not done until this is a permanent feature of the landscape,” she said.
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Associated Press journalists Joshua A. Bickel in Wooster, Ohio, and Ross D. Franklin in Eloy, Arizona, contributed to this report.
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Follow Melina Walling on X: @MelinaWalling.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage is financially supported by multiple private foundations. AP is responsible for each and every subject. Find AP standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and covered areas of funding at AP.org.
