Chemurgy
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Chemurgy is a branch of applied
chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
concerned with preparing industrial products from agricultural raw materials. The concept developed by the early years of the 20th century. For example, products such as brushes and motion picture film were made from
cellulose Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell wall ...
. Beginning in the 1920s, William J. Hale, agricultural journalist Wheeler McMillen, and other Americans began advocating a greater link between farmers and industry. The word "chemurgy" was coined by chemist
William J. Hale William Jasper Hale (September 26, 1874 – October 5, 1944) was an American academic administrator. He was the first president of Tennessee State University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1912 to 1943. Early life W ...
and first publicized in his 1934 book ''The Farm Chemurgic''.


The ''Hemp Body or Soybean Car''

Automaker
Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...
began to test farm crops for their industrial potential around 1930, and soon settled on hemp and the
soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu a ...
as particularly promising (the famous Hemp Body or '' Soybean Car''). The Ford Motor Company used soybeans in such parts as gearshift knobs and horn buttons, and hemp for the body of the car. The automobile was designed to run on hemp diesel. Ford Motor Company accessed these innovations via the discovery and ingenuity of
George Washington Carver George Washington Carver ( 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the ea ...
, Tuskegee Scientist and Father of Chemurgy. In 1935, the Farm Chemurgic Council (later renamed the National Farm Chemurgic Council) was formed to encourage greater use of renewable raw materials in industry. In its early years, the Council received substantial publicity. It was perceived by the Roosevelt Administration as a political threat, since Council leaders questioned U.S. Department of Agriculture policies. First placing much of its emphasis on demonstrating the benefits of Agrol (a line of blended motor fuels that included
ethanol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl ...
), the Council drew strong opposition from the petroleum industry. The Agrol pilot plant, which also experienced management and financial difficulties, shut down in 1938. Wheeler McMillen, who had become president of the Council the previous year, decided to distance the chemurgy movement from ethanol, mend fences with the petroleum industry, and place the Council on a more cautious course. The Council’s cause received an unexpected boost when
Theodore G. Bilbo Theodore Gilmore Bilbo (October 13, 1877 – August 21, 1947) was an American politician who twice served as governor of Mississippi (1916–1920, 1928–1932) and later was elected a U.S. Senator (1935–1947). A lifelong Democrat, he was a fil ...
, a U.S. senator from Mississippi, sought a means to promote new uses for his region’s surplus cotton. To make his goal more politically attractive, he supported a broader research program. In the end, four regional U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratories, dedicated to finding new uses for farm crops, were authorized under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. The labs were established in
Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania Wyndmoor is a census-designated place (CDP) in Springfield Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,498 at the 2010 census. Wyndmoor has the same ZIP code, 19038, as the towns of Glenside, North Hills, ...
;
New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster.
; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...
;
Peoria, Illinois Peoria ( ) is the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, United States, and the largest city on the Illinois River. As of the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census, the city had a population of 113,150. It is the principal city of the Peoria ...
; and
Albany, California Albany ( ) is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northwestern Alameda County, California. The population was 20,271 at the 2020 census. History In 1908, a group of local women protested the dumping of Berkeley garbage in their ...
. Over time, their research agendas expanded, and they became less focused on chemurgy. Nevertheless, their involvement in that field was symbolic of the chemurgy movement’s transformation from a cause associated with Roosevelt Administration critics to one with clear support from that administration.


Emergence

Chemurgy demonstrated its worth during World War II, particularly in alleviating the rubber shortage caused when Japan cut off most of America's supply. Corn was used as raw material in much of the synthetic rubber produced during the war. Various other plants, including guayule and kok-saghyz (Russian dandelion), were investigated as rubber sources. In the American Midwest, school children were encouraged to gather
milkweed ''Asclepias'' is a genus of herbaceous, perennial, flowering plants known as milkweeds, named for their latex, a milky substance containing cardiac glycosides termed cardenolides, exuded where cells are damaged. Most species are toxic to humans ...
floss, previously considered a nuisance but now valued for a new role as a filler in military
life jacket A personal flotation device (PFD; also referred to as a life jacket, life preserver, life belt, Mae West, life vest, life saver, cork jacket, buoyancy aid or flotation suit) is a flotation device in the form of a vest or suite that is worn by a ...
s. A priest in Iowa even made news by urging congregants to grow
hemp Hemp, or industrial hemp, is a botanical class of ''Cannabis sativa'' cultivars grown specifically for industrial or medicinal use. It can be used to make a wide range of products. Along with bamboo, hemp is among the fastest growing plants o ...
, whose previous reputation as a drug hazard yielded to military requirements for rope and cordage.


Decline

The word "chemurgy" decreased in use by 1950. By this point, the methods had yielded modest inroads to industry and research, including four national research laboratories, the development of the Southern pine industry, and the initial emergence of the American flax paper industry. After this time, awareness of the term as connoting a distinct set of industrial techniques faded, and the methods themselves did not spread further. Explanations for the decline vary. From a market perspective, the simplest explanation is substitution by fossil fuels, which proved cheaper for industrial production of many materials. Beyond this, misaligned incentives and cultural aspects of the industry may have restrained investor enthusiasm and adoption by farmers. From an investment perspective, chemurgical projects often failed to move from pilot products to full-scale production. This leads some analysts to suggest that chemurgy disappointed too many investors in particular projects over time. Indeed, a related problem was in the industry's leadership and funding: a small number of private investors supplied the majority of the industry, and many decisions in it were guided by leadership personality conflicts in the small cadre of corporate-technocratic scientists in industry. This emphasis in the industry on the technological side may have dampened enthusiasm among farmers. The leaders of the industry promoted rapid technological shifts in agricultural production, which was opposed by the more conservative uptake of new technologies in agriculture. Finally, public programs aligned incentives against the industry. The New Deal provided immediate subsidies to farmers, whereas chemurgy as an industry required a longer-term program. Prospects for chemurgy appeared promising into the 1950s. An article in the December 3, 1951 issue of ''
Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', said "the flood of chemurgy seems to be swelling." But as uses of agricultural raw materials advanced, so did uses for petrochemicals, and non-renewable materials eventually won out in a number of markets. Petrochemical detergents were widely used in place of agriculturally derived soaps, and petrochemical plastic wrapping material largely replaced cellophane. The Chemurgic Council went through a period of decline and finally closed its doors in 1977. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in chemurgy, although the word itself has largely fallen out of usage. In 1990, Wheeler McMillen then 97 years old, addressed a national conference of latter-day chemurgic enthusiasts in Washington, DC. The conference served to launch the New Uses Council, which seeks to further the cause formerly promoted by the Chemurgic Council.
George Washington Carver George Washington Carver ( 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the ea ...
was one of the most famous scientists of this field. In the Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver titled "My Work is that of Conservation" author Mark D. Hersey writes, "Thus, although he accepted the honorary mantle of "the first and greatest chemurgist," he was hardly in its mainstream. On the contrary, Carver often misconstrued the movement's aims, imagining they fell more in line with his own than in fact they did. Because Carver had devoted his energies to improving the lives of impoverished black farmers, he saw chemurgy as a field in which science addressed "a great human problem." His 1936 injunction to "chemicalize the farm" sprang from his abhorrence of waste rather than a desire for profit, let alone an affinity for chemical pesticides and fertilizers. He wanted "waste products of the farm" to be used for making "insulating boards, paints, dyes, industrial alcohol, plastics of various kinds, rugs, mats and cloth from fiber plants, oils, gums and waxes, etc."


Substitution examples

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Kenaf Kenaf tymology: Persian ''Hibiscus cannabinus'', is a plant in the family Malvaceae also called Deccan hemp and Java jute. ''Hibiscus cannabinus'' is in the genus ''Hibiscus'' and is native to Africa, though its exact origin is unknown. The name ...
for
jute Jute is a long, soft, shiny bast fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus ''Corchorus'', which is in the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fiber is ''Corchorus olit ...
(rope) *
castor oil Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from castor beans. It is a colourless or pale yellow liquid with a distinct taste and odor. Its boiling point is and its density is 0.961 g/cm3. It includes a mixture of triglycerides in which about ...
for petroleum-based oil (lubrication)


See also

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Decorticator A decorticator (from Latin: ''cortex'', bark) is a machine for stripping the skin, Bark (botany), bark, or rind off nuts, wood, plant stalks, grain, etc., in preparation for further processing. History In 1933, a farmer named Bernagozzi from Bo ...
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Semisynthesis Semisynthesis, or partial chemical synthesis, is a type of chemical synthesis that uses chemical compounds isolated from natural sources (such as microbial cell cultures or plant material) as the starting materials to produce novel compounds with ...


Notes

{{Reflist History of chemistry