Katrina Cornish spends her days growing dandelions and desert shrubs. She harvests the stretchy rubber substances they produce and uses special machines to dip them into condoms, medical gloves and parts for tracheal tubes. And she thinks these products could change the agricultural landscape in the United States forever.
Cornish, a professor at Ohio State University who studies alternatives to rubber, isn’t the only one putting energy into alternative crops like the desert bush, guayule or the rubber dandelions that bloom with yellow petals in the greenhouse where Cornish works. Also in Arizona, guayule is thriving amid drought, its blue-green leaves separated from dry dirt on a research and development farm operated by the Bridgestone tire company. And in Nebraska and other parts of the central U.S., green grasses spring from sorghum, waving with reddish grain clusters.
It’s not corn, soybeans, wheat or cotton that have dominated these areas for decades. Instead, they are crops that are being touted by many companies, philanthropic organizations, and national and international entities as promising alternatives 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 important to fight hunger in certain parts of the world, they also say drastic changes need to happen in markets and processing before we can fight hunger. I ever see fields full of these ready-made plants or many products in stores made with them, especially in the United States.
Most rubber processing takes place abroad, and the US is unwilling to process rubber domestically. But Cornish also says the threat of disease, climate change and international trade tensions also mean it would be a smart investment to work on growing and processing domestic alternatives.
Because sorghum is also grown for people to eat, as well as for farm animals or even pet food, processing would need to be scaled up, says Nate Blum, CEO of Sorghum United, an international nongovernmental organization focused on spreading sorghum awareness about sorghum. Although the U.S. is the world’s largest producer of sorghum, it still represents only a small portion of the acres grown compared to staple crops such as corn and soybeans. And while corn and soybeans are heavily promoted in the U.S., Blum hopes consumer demand will encourage more investment in the sorghum and millet industries.
However, farmers are more likely to grow the crops that receive subsidies, said James Gerber, a senior scientist at the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown. Gerber, who recently published an article in Nature Food on which crops will continue to see yield growth and which may stagnate in the coming years, says comparing sorghum production in India and the US illustrates this principle. India has invested heavily in improving sorghum yields there, but the US has not, he said.
Still, Blum thinks there are real benefits to be had from sorghum, and perhaps more pressing benefits in other parts of the world than in the US. After last year, when the UN Food and Agriculture Organization declared its focus on millet, including sorghum, Blum thinks much more needs to be done. “The end of the international year is not the end. It’s really just the beginning,” he said.
With climate change impacting agriculture around the world, the need for crops that can withstand extreme weather, such as prolonged drought, is especially important in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where smallholder farmers rely on only a few hectares of land. Some breeding programs for these crops take place in the US, but are much less commonly incorporated into the American diet or lifestyle.
Therefore, specialty markets will be critical if these crops have any hope of taking off here, Cornish said. She believes that just as Tesla opened up the possibility of mainstream electric cars by first marketing the product as a luxury good, premium goods such as condoms, trachea parts and radiation-resistant surgical gloves should be made with dandelion and guayule to inspire manufacturers . to grow more meaningful quantities of any of these crops.
“You can’t do it without going that route because you don’t have economies of scale and you don’t have enough to get into markets that need a large volume,” Cornish said.
Guayule is “obviously 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 in guayule has been solely in research and development for the past decade, and it was only in the last two years that the company converted it into an exploratory business. “You’re trying to create a new industry for America that doesn’t exist right now,” he said.
In the meantime, U.S. farmers rely on an agricultural economy built for scale, so they grow the crops that give them options where to sell, said Curt Covington, senior director of institutional affairs at AgAmerica Lending, a private investment manager and lender. focused on agricultural land. He added that the bankers who finance these farmers often don’t want to take the risk of a complete switch to a crop for which there are no established markets. That could be a problem for the country, he said, because climate change in the future will exacerbate threats to crops like cotton and alfalfa, thirsty crops grown in the Southwest.
Arizona farmers have already had to set aside land, halting planting altogether and sometimes struggling to maintain or abandon family farms due to water disruptions in the Colorado River. Although guayule uses only half as much water as cotton and alfalfa, it does little good for the majority of farmers if the economy does not support it.
“What you end up with is, quite frankly, a lot of vacant 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 she can avoid, she says, by not rethinking the United States as a country dominated by grain waves, but also as a dominant producer of natural rubber.
“My job isn’t done until this is a permanent feature of the landscape,” she said.
___
Associated Press journalists Joshua A. Bickel in Wooster, Ohio, and Ross D. Franklin in Eloy, Arizona, contributed to this report.
___
Follow Melina Walling on X: @MelinaWalling.
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental reporting receives funding from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s Standards for Working with Charities, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas at AP.org.