Guayule: Then & Now
In a Salinas, Calif. newspaper we recently came across a great column chronicling the guayule industry in that region before and after th
e bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
With trade from Southeast Asia cut off and rubber essential to the U.S. war effort, the guayule rubber produced in Salinas became a national security issue overnight.
A key difference between guayule then and now was that in the 1940s, the guayule cultivated could only be harvested for its rubber after seven years of growth. Today, 12 to 20 months is all that’s needed for the guayule that Yulex Corporation and its partners cultivate to mature, and it’s harvested once per year with far more rubber latex produced from each plant! (To learn more about guayule’s history, visit the Guayule Timeline at Yulex.com)
It was also around World War II that U.S. scientists discovered how to make synthetic rubber from petroleum-based materials, and once the war ended, the U.S. focused on synthetic rubber and latex as the primary alternative to natural, imported sources. As Jim Albanese writes in his ‘Wayback Machine’ column in The Salinas Californian:
“In 1945, the last year of the war, 1,628 acres of guayule were harvested in the Salinas Valley. An additional 7,429 acres were planted but never harvested. Those plants were subsequently destroyed.
If only we’d had a little more faith and patience with guayule. Today, the humble plant is a godsend to medical professionals and patients, offering its juices to provide nonallergenic gloves and other equipment.”
Too true, Jim, but it’s not just medical patients and latex allergy sufferers who have embraced guayule today. It has also been discovered by the manufacturers of everyday consumer products. Specifically, they’ve discovered its benefits as a safe, renewable material over synthetic petroleum-based materials.
And from that perspective, at least one thing hasn’t changed: guayule is still being used to save the planet.
