This Texas shrub could help save U.S. rubber

Rubber may be the most important agricultural product in America—and it’s in danger. Now, scientists and growers are working to cultivate solutions.

For more than a decade, Jody Scott tended shrubs in a dry field in southern Arizona. A lifelong farmer of myriad crops, Scott calls this the most boring thing he’s ever grown. And growing it, he said, “was the funnest job I ever had.”