The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-09-03
16 Latin Countries
 Grow Eastern Crops
United Fruit President Calls on U. S. to Help Make Western Hemisphere AgriculturaIIy SeIf.Suficient

tection, such as favorable reciprocal trade treaties. This would lead to the development of mutually profit able trade, he says, and again prove Secretary Cordell Kulps great adage to the effect that the road to mar ket is the best way to peace"
 "The United States Department of Agriculture experts" Zemurray writes, "have found that at least 16 Latin American countries, from Mex leo through Boliva, have land suit able for growing rubber. We al- ready have new, selected, high yielding, blight resistant strains of Hevea rubber which are producing in the American tropics at the rate of between 1900 and l,500 pounds of crude rubber per acre yearly, as compared with average yields of 450 to 700 pounds from the plantations of the War East"
 zemurray calls our synthetic ruh- berber programs @ brilliant achieve ment" but says that "for long time to come, experts tell me, natural rubber will also be needed and millions of acres will be devoted to growing it."
 Within less than a month after Pearl Harbor, the United Fruit Coin- pany signed a contract with the De- fense Supplies Corporation to ex- pand Its planting of abaca in trop- ical America, zemurray reveals. He says that the abaca plant, @ tropical fiber from which Manila rope is made, is indispensable to the op- eration of the aavies and merchant fleets of the United Nations and that 95 ep nrcotecmfwypcmfwy O-fmm 95 per cent of 1t had been grown in the Philippines.
 "When the Jap bomb racks opened over Pearl Harbor we had more than 2,000 acres planted in Panama to a fine quality of abaca, enough to fur. nish seed for large-scale planting" Zemurray reports. Against the need for 10000 acres of abaca, our 2,000. acre planting was small, indeed. The urgency of the need was explained to United Fruits tropical personnel; the countries of Middle America were cooperative"
 zemurray reveals that engineers have since built a mill in Panama to separate fibers from the abaca stalk, and that another is under construction in Costa Rica.
 Before the Japs struck in the Paci- flc, Zemurray says that British Ma laya and other Far Eastern coun- tries were producing more than 75 per cent of the worlds supply of rotenone, an essential insecticide for farmers, Victory gardeners, and the Army and Navy.
 Here again the U. s. Department of Agriculture has been of outstand. ing help" Zemurray declares. From its tropical experiment station in Puerto Rico. planting stock of der- riS (from which rotenone Is taken) has gone to Haiti, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Repub. lie, Ecuador, and other areas of the American tropics. The rotenone plants thrive in American tropical soil"
 Zemurray says that quinine, like rubber, was originally grown wild In South America and then carried to the Far East, where 1t was domesti- cated. Again like rubber, 1t is be- ing replaced by substitutes, he says, but big quantities of 1t are still needed to fight malaria,
 'The story is Q similar one for dozens of other tropical crops which wA have been bringing around the world" he writes. Every one of them can be grown by the farmers of tropical America; every one has been grown in small or large quanti- ties. Every one of them is needed by the United States, in war and in peace. Every one of them, raised in Latin America and sold to the United States, will make our south ern Republics stronger, more pros- porous, more stable, and a better market for our own manufactured products"