Beginning in the 1920s, William J. Hale, agricultural journalist Wheeler McMillen, and other Americans began advocating a greater link between farmers and industry.
Ford Motor Company accessed these innovations via the discovery and ingenuity of George Washington Carver, Tuskegee Scientist and Father of Chemurgy.
[3] First placing much of its emphasis on demonstrating the benefits of Agrol (a line of blended motor fuels that included ethanol), the Council drew strong opposition from the petroleum industry.
The Council’s cause received an unexpected boost when Theodore G. Bilbo, a U.S. senator from Mississippi, sought a means to promote new uses for his region’s surplus cotton.
Chemurgy demonstrated its worth during World War II, particularly in alleviating the rubber shortage caused when Japan cut off most of America's supply.
[7] In the American Midwest, school children were encouraged to gather milkweed floss, previously considered a nuisance but now valued for a new role as a filler in military life jackets.
[8][9] A priest in Iowa even made news by urging congregants to grow hemp, whose previous reputation as a drug hazard yielded to military requirements for rope and cordage.
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.
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."
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.