Report from the National Fertilizer Association
REPORT FROM THE NATIONAL FERTILIZER ASSOCIATION.
Presented by Mr. John D. Toll, Secretary of the Educational Bureau of the National Fertilizer Association, and Mr. Charles S. Rauh, of Indianapolis, Official Delegates to the Fourth National Conservation Congress.
In the last analysis man must have food. The law of supply and demand becomes operative the minute that a nation is born. Scarcity of food produces abnormal prices. As scarcity increases, the prices become almost prohibitive. The attention of every citizen of this country has been called to the rapid increase in the cost of food products during the last decade. This increase has been due to several causes, among which we may note the following: (1) Increase of population has exceeded the increase in production of foodstuffs; (2) scarcity of new lands to be developed to meet the needs of a growing population; (3) decrease in productivity of some of the formerly productive soils of this country.
Other causes have undoubtedly contributed to this situation, but the one pertinent to the present discussion is that of decreasing soil fertility as it is related to the production of crops. The production of crops depends (1) upon the fertility of the soil; (2) climatic conditions; (3) quality of seed used; and (4) the culture and care given to the crop. Three of these governing factors are under the control of the farmer. Therefore, inasmuch as they are under his control, so also is the supply of food under his control to an equal degree.
According to the latest available statistics, out of 1,755,132,800 acres in the United States, there are 383,891,682 acres of improved land. A considerable amount of this land is being used for the production of crops of various kinds. These crops in 1911 totaled the enormous production of $5,504,000,000.
The plant food consisting of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash which these crops take from the soil is not all returned to the land, and, as a result, we have a yearly drain upon the fertility account of our soils.
The loss of all three essential elements of plant food is being partly met by the wise Conservation and use of barn manure.
The loss of nitrogen in this depletion is also being partly met by the growing of legumes which have the power of taking nitrogen from the air and fixing it in the soil where it is available as plant food.
If any one of these elements is lacking, crop production suffers a decrease in quantity and a deterioration in quality, to wit: If phosphoric acid is the lacking element in soil, the production of ear corn may be large in quantity but the ears are soft and immature, consequently are inferior for stock food or for human food. In the same way a scarcity of phosphoric acid decreases the yield of wheat and causes an inferiority in its quality.
The lack of nitrogen and potash has equally disastrous effects on the production of the crop. It is, therefore, not only a supply of plant food that is necessary, but the balancing of it in order that our soil may produce a maximum crop of best quality. The fertilizer industry is an industry engaged entirely in the supply of these plant food elements. It is, therefore, a direct contributor to the maintenance of the human race, in that it deals in the elements of plant food.
Not only since its inception in 1840 has this industry contributed to the supply of plant food, which in the end means human food, but it has noted the wasteful methods of agriculture being practiced, unconsciously frequent, in many parts of this country, and it has put forth continuous efforts along the lines of educating the American farmer to grow larger yields of better crops, to maintain and increase the fertility of the soil, and increase the average yield per acre.
The fertilizer industry has, through its national association, within the past two years established several movements, the great purpose of which is to assist in the dissemination of knowledge of modern methods of agriculture.
Another line of effort wherein the fertilizer industry has been a direct contributor to the conservation of vital resources is in its great manufacturing plants. To produce the phosphoric acid which is supplied in fertilizers, the industry obtains the barren phosphatic rock from Tennessee, Carolinas, Florida, etc., grinds this material and treats it chemically so as to make the phosphoric acid available. By this means, it supplies to the great crop producing States of this country the element of plant food, which, to a large extent, determines the maturity and quality of crop production.
The industry also takes the waste material of the packing houses, such as bone, offal, blood, etc., dries and grinds it and produces an ingredient of fertilizers which was formerly thrown away. This packing house material supplies nitrogen and phosphoric acid.
Furthermore, the garbage of the cities and towns of this country is collected and reduced to the form of fertilizer ingredient, where it formerly was burned or otherwise destroyed.
Not only is all this done, but the former waste products of the cotton and tobacco industry are similarly reduced to a form of plant food to be mixed with other materials and returned to the soil.
Still further, besides gathering up the waste and otherwise barren products of the country, the industry has developed processes whereby the gases from gas and coke manufacture are collected and reduced to sulphate of ammonia in which form it constitutes one of the nitrogenous ingredients in fertilizers. This ammonia sulphate is used as an ingredient in fertilizers supplying nitrogen.
Of late years the industry has gone even further than this, in that a process has been discovered whereby the nitrogen of the air is harnessed, and the product reduced to such forms that it supplies available nitrogen for plant food.
In assembling and preparing these essential elements of plant food, the industry, as we have pointed out, not only prepares material to return to the soil to supply the elements which have been taken out of it, but it actually provides in deficient soils elements in which they may be deficient, and by so doing makes more productive lands which, on account of their balanced plant food, could not produce paying results before being treated.
The State of Georgia in 1911 spent over twenty million dollars for fertilizers, with the result that they raised more and better cotton than was ever raised in this State before. The State of Maine in the same year used 150,000 tons of fertilizers on their potato fields, with the result that their good potato growers produced from two to four hundred bushels of potatoes per acre. The total State productions exceed 25,000,000 bushels.
The fertilizer industry, we believe, occupies a most prominent part in the problem of producing sustenance for future generations and in conserving the vital resources of the world, inasmuch as it is making a close study of and doing a wonderful work in devising means whereby practically all of the former waste materials of this country may be reduced to available plant food and returned to the soil from which they were taken.
Summarizing, the fertilizer industry, as we have pointed out, is an important factor in the maintenance of the human race, of this and other continents, in that (1) it supplies plant food to balance up the plant food in the soil and to make up the deficiencies which have occurred as a result of continuous cropping; (2) assists in educating the farmers to conserve the fertility of their soils by employing scientific methods of farming; (3) it makes use of waste products of other industries which have formerly been destroyed, and returns them to the soil in the form of food for future crops.
The fertilizer industry, therefore, must be recognized as one of the greatest agencies of conservation of vital resources.