Agricultural materials used as feedstocks for industrial processes. For many centuries agricultural products were the main sources of raw material for the manufacturing of soap, paint, ink, lubricants, grease, paper, cloth, drugs, and a host of other nonfood products. During the early 1900s, the advances in organic synthesis in western Europe and the United States led to the use of coal as an alternative resource; in the 1940s, oil and natural gas were added as starting materials as a result of great advances in catalysis and polymer sciences. Since then the petrochemical industry has grown rapidly as the result of the abundance and low price of the starting materials as well as the development of new products, such as nylon and other polymers, water-based paints, and detergents. However, with the rapidly increasing economies of the nations of the world, these developments did not ever result in reduction in the utilization of agricultural products as industrial materials. Although specific nonfood crops, such as linseed or cotton, may have suffered from these developments, animal fats, vegetable oils, starch, cellulose, and other renewable agricultural resources still are used extensively in industry, and many new uses have been developed since the 1950s.