And it's grown in the scorching deserts of Arizona.
If you watched the 2022 Indy Car Music City Grand Prix, you might have noticed—between the multitude of crashes, that is—cars running Firestone tires with green stripes. The green denotes the use of rubber in the sidewalls—a type of natural rubber extracted from a scrubby shrub in the Arizona desert.
Wait, wait—farming in Arizona? Yes, this is a thing, though one that gets more tenuous each year. Ever-intensifying water restrictions in Arizona are making farming more difficult, and that's another advantage in guayule's favor: It uses half as much water as Arizona crops like cotton and alfalfa, and Bridgestone's agricultural engineers are working on ways to grow it with significantly less.
Guayule is planted and left to grow for two years; they accumulate rubber in their bark as a stress response to cold, so it takes two winter chills to get sufficient rubber. After two years, the plants are harvested by cutting them right down to the soil; they'll be re-grown for another two years, cut again, then re-grown for another two. The third time they are harvested roots and all, and new seeds are planted to begin the cycle over again.
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