Katrina Cornish farms dandelions and desert shrubs. Not for food—she harvests the stretchy rubber substance (latex) they produce. Machines turn it into medical gloves and parts for trachea tubes.
The Ohio State University professor studies rubber alternatives. Rubber dandelions bloom in Cornish’s greenhouse. She also grows guayule (WHY-you-lee), a shrub native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
The majority of natural rubber used in the United States comes from rubber trees in Southeast Asia. Although the tree is native to South America, blight killed most of the trees there in the early 1900s.
The United States doesn’t have its own source of natural rubber, but it does produce synthetic rubber from petroleum products. Both natural and synthetic have pros and cons. For example, synthetic rubber has more stability in varying temperatures. Natural rubber is biodegradable. A vast array of products uses these materials: tires, shoes, medical devices, mattresses, gaskets, and more.
Most natural rubber processing happens overseas. But Cornish says threats of disease, bad weather, and international trade tensions make it a smart investment to secure domestic alternatives.
But all the growing and processing domestically may not be practical. Farmers need crops that they can sell on a large scale. Bankers financing those farmers often don’t want to take the risk of switching to a crop without established markets.
Guayule uses half the water of cotton and alfalfa. That’s good for farmers in drought-pounded areas. But if the crop doesn’t work financially, that doesn’t help most farmers.
That’s why specialty markets will be critical, Cornish says. Tesla helped bring electric cars into the mainstream by first marketing them as luxury products. She thinks premium goods like trachea tube parts and radiation-rated surgical gloves should be made with dandelion and guayule. That could inspire producers to grow larger amounts of those crops.
Cornish isn’t the only one looking into alternative rubber. In Arizona, tire company Bridgestone grows guayule at a research and development farm. Guayule is “clearly a specialty crop and probably always will be” in terms of acres grown, says Bridgestone executive Bill Niaura. Only within the past two years has the company begun transitioning its research into an exploratory business.
Despite the challenges, Cornish wants the United States to become a major producer of natural rubber. “We have to have these alternatives to meet the projected demand, even if [the rubber tree species] doesn’t collapse,” she says. “Now if [it] collapses, we need them yesterday.”
Why? God gave us a vast variety of types of plants—and the creativity to find new ways to use them.
