industrial uses. Led by US National Research Council chemist William J. Hale, the Chemurgy movement included many notable figures in American society including Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It had widespread support among farmers hard-pressed by the Great Depression, and captured the attention of government for its wartime contributions to finding domestic substitutes for foreign materials (Finlay, 2004; Geiser, 2001; Morris, 1990). The triumph of the petrochemical industry was, however, probably inevitable given the superior mobility of oil. Mobility was a decided asset for resources in 20th century industrial development which was based in giant economies of scale, mass markets and tendencies toward centralization. Oil also had an advantage in the ease in which industrial chemicals could be derived from petroleum in the cracking process (Morris & Ahmed, 1993). Those advantages are today either fast evaporating or artificially reinforced. On one hand, efficient economies no longer prize mobility as essential and desirable. Flexibility is more valued than size, centralization and massive economies of scale. There is increasing public pressure on government to make industry internalize the formerly externalized costs of long-distance transport, making petrochemicals gradually more expensive. Using resources as close as possible to where they are produced is the ideal. Hemp, straw, soybeans and other renewable materials are not as easily transported as oil, but for this very reason they can be used as a means of local-regional development. They encourage local processing of locally-grown materials. The emerging Carbohydrate Economy is being heralded as a key component in a possible revitalization of rural communities (Osdoba, 2002). But it also features prominently into emerging