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Abstract
Excerpts from the report: Domestic industries using jute and similar soft fibers are dependent upon imports. Foreign Commerce Weekly places burlap among those products that are essential to industrial preparedness, according to defense plans, and shows that India supplies 95 percent of such fibers. Soft fiber from domestic sources for use as jute substitutes has been limited, because most of the fiber plants are tropical and subtropical in habitat and because labor costs have been more favorable for production in tropical countries. Recent agronomic and engineering research suggests the possibility that some of the fiber-yielding plants may be adapted to Temperate Zone conditions and that costs of production may be reduced so that domestic production might be possible under the current necessity for industrial preparedness for defense. Kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) is one of the soft fiber plants that shows promise as a domestic source of a soft fiber to substitute for and supplement jute.