"Transforming Business and Biomass: From Chemurgy to Green Materials"

This paper takes a historical approach to the business strategy and narratives of progress associated with bio-derived new materials, examining the transformative aspirations of chemical technologies on agricultural feedstocks and regional economies. It is grounded in the case of chemurgy, the valorization of farm products (often considered to be waste or surplus) into higher value materials, popularized in the United States in the 1930s. In the popular imagination, chemurgic manufacture often evoked the production of bio-derived consumer products being grown directly from soil, widening the focus of production from the factory as a place of urban machines to include rural farms. The close connection and ultimate misalignment between these biochemical technologies and the shifting political and economic dynamics of conflict and crisis on materials and food supplies is often cited by historians as a cause for the failure of chemurgy to reach the potential envisioned by its proponents. However, what may have been earlier called ‘chemurgic principles’ have flourished in contemporary fields related to biotechnology and green chemistry, amidst with the increasing pressures of sustainability and transition from petrochemical-based materials. For example, the aspiration to link industrial manufacturing and agriculture was shared by Henry Ford when the company launched a prototype automobile with a body made from soy-derived plastic in 1941. Yet, this project was abandoned with the onset of the Second World War and many decades would pass before the company would pursue soy-plastic again, this time under the banner of sustainability. This contribution contextualizes such bio-derived materials over a century of discontinuous research and development, while drawing connections to contemporary business and processes of fabrication.