Inventor of Over 300 uses for peanuts and hundreds more for soybeans, pecans, sweet potatoes along with a dozen other plants native to the South. Many of these contributed to rural economic development by offering alternative crops to cotton that was not only beneficial to farms but to the land.

Carver marketed a few of his products such as Carvoline Antiseptic Hair dressing that a mix of peanut oil and lanolin and Carvoline Rubbing Oil was a peanut oil for massages. Carver himself was a skilled masseur and was the trainer for the Iowa State football team.

In 1937, Carver met Henry Ford at Dearborn, Michigan at a conference and the two became close friends. Carver also worked with soy that he and Ford considered as an alternative fuel but the two men denied that they were working on a solution to the wartime rubber storage in 1942.  This same year, Henry Ford built a replica of Carver’s slave cabin at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn as a tribute to his friend. Ford also dedicated the George Washington Carver Laboratory in Dearborn in 1942.