The synthetic liquid fuels program was established in 1944. The Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Bureau of Mines, was authorized to develop and maintain one or more demonstration plants to produce synthetic liquid fuels from coal, oil shale, and other substances, and one or more demonstration plants to produce liquid fuels from agricultural and forestry products. The Bureau of Mines would also develop all facilities and accessories for the manufacture, purification, storage, and distribution of the products.[289] Unlike the other plans for production of essential defense elements or commodities, this program was not designed directly to meet a major portion of defense needs for the commodity produced. Rather, the plants were to be of the minimum size which would allow the government to furnish industry with the necessary cost and engineering data for the development of a synthetic liquid-fuel industry.[290] In the Abaca Production Act of 1950, Congress declared that abaca, a hard fiber used in the making of marine and other cordage, is a highly strategic and critical material which cannot be produced in commercial quantities in the continental United States, and of which an adequate supply is vital to the industrial and military requirements for the common defense of the United States.[291] The federal government was therefore to continue the program for the production and sale of abaca in which it was engaged at the termination of hostilities and to encourage abaca production throughout the world. The total acreage produced by the government was not to exceed fifty thousand, fluctuating below that upper limit at the discretion of the President.[292]