Industrial products from agricultural commodities

Raw milk is a unique agricultural commodity. It contains emulsified globular lipids and colloidally dispersed proteins that may be easily modified, concentrated, or separated in relatively pure form from lactose and various salts that are in true solution. With these physical-chemical properties, an array of milk products and dairy-derived functional food ingredients has been developed and manufactured. Some, like cheese, butter, and certain fermented dairy foods, were developed in antiquity. Other dairy foods, like nonfat dry milk, ice cream, casein, and whey derivatives, are relatively recent products of science and technology. This chapter describes and explains the composition of traditional milk products, as well as that of some of the more recently developed or modified milk products designed to be competitive in the modern food industry. 

Agribusiness, like the pharmaceuticals industry, is big business. Apart from edible food products, U.S. agriculture will be keyed more and more to the manufacture of industrial nonfood products. These comprise commodity/bulk chemicals (generally of petroleum origin) and specialty high-value products. Examples of the latter are health-care and cosmetic products. 

Furfural or 2-furancarboxyaldehyde (F) was first obtained in the early nineteenth century and became an industrial commodity about a century later, to reach an industrial production today of some 280 000 tons pa- year [9]. It can be readily and economically prepared from a vast array of agricultural and forestry wastes containing pentoses (see Chapter 13) in sufficient amounts to justify a commercial exploitation. Examples of these renewable resources are com cobs, oat and rice hulls, sugarcane bagasse, cotton seeds, olive husks and stones, as well... 

Carver is probably best known for his ability to convert plant products into a wealth of useful consumer products. For example, he is credited with producing around 165 different commodities from the sweet potato and some 13 5 compounds from peanut oil. Carver s success with products Ifom these plants, as well as other scientific contributions has been cited as having played a key role in industrial development of the South (Atkins, 1949 Branson, 1955 Ferguson, 1949). Carver also created an Agricultural Experimental Station that focused on discoveries that would benefit the society s most needy (Jenkins, 1984). 

The most important industrial alkalis are the weak alkali ammonia (Section 9.3), caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), and lime (calcium oxide).1-6 For many industrial and agricultural purposes, the most economical source of alkali is lime, which is used in steelmaking and other metallurgical operations ( 45% of U.S. production of lime), in control of air pollution from smokestack gases (Chapter 8), in water and sewage treatment (Sections 9.6 and 14.5), in pulp and paper production (Section 10.4), in reduction of soil acidity, in cement and concrete manufacture (indirectly, as discussed later), and in many chemical processes such as paper making (Section 10.4). In short, lime is one of the most important of all chemical commodities. 

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