CHAPTER XIX
HOME-MIXING OF FERTILIZERS
The Practice of Home-mixing.—The business of compounding fertilizers has been involved in a great deal of unnecessary mystery. Many of our best station scientists have labored to show that the home-mixing of fertilizers is a simple and profitable piece of work, and the heaviest users of fertilizers in the east now buy unmixed materials, but a majority of farmers use the factory-mixed. Manufacturers are right in their contention that many people do not know what materials are best for their own fields, or what proportions are best, but the purchase of mixed materials does not solve their problem and it does not help them to a solution as quickly as home-mixing. The source of the plant-food in the factory-mixed goods is not known, while it is known in the home-mixed.
Effectiveness of Home-mixing.—Van Slyke says ("Fertilizers and Crops," p. 477): "Manufacturers of fertilizers and their agents have persistently sought to discourage the practice of home-mixing, but their statements cannot be accepted as the evidence of disinterested parties. It has been represented to farmers that peculiar and mysterious virtues are imparted to the plant-food constituents by proper mixing, and that really proper mixing can be accomplished only by means not at the command of farmers. Such statements are misrepresentations, based either upon the ignorance of the person who makes them or upon his determination to sell commercial mixed goods."
Criticisms of Home-mixing.—The manufacturer's advocate formerly laid much stress upon the danger attending the treatment of bones and rock with sulphuric acid. That is a business of itself, and the home-mixer has nothing to do with it. He buys on the market the acidulated bone or rock, just as a manufacturer makes his purchase.
It is claimed that the manufacturer renders a great public service by using supplies of plant-food that the home-mixer would not use, and thus conserves the world's total supply. Let us see the measure of truth in the statement. The manufacturer gets his supply of phosphoric acid from rock, bone, or tankage exactly as does the home-mixer. His potash he buys from the syndicate owning the German beds, and the farmer does the same. These sources must contribute all the phosphoric acid and potash used on land, if we except trifling supplies of ashes, marl, etc., and the only difference in the transaction is that in one case the manufacturer buys the materials and mixes them, and in the other case the farmer buys them direct and mixes them. The remaining constituent is the nitrogen. If the manufacturer uses nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, bones, tankage, or manufactured nitrogen, he does what the home-mixer may do. Most nitrogen must come from these sources. If all came from these sources, the increased demand would not affect the price. The beds of nitrate of soda will last for hundreds of years, the present waste in ammonia from coal is immense, and the supply of manufactured nitrogen can be without limit. The saving in use of inert and low-grade forms of nitrogen is more profitable to the manufacturer than to the farmer who buys and pays freight on low-grade materials.
The rather remarkable argument is advanced that fertilizer manufacturers do not make a large per cent on their investment, despite the perfection of their equipment, and therefore the farmer cannot find it profitable to mix his materials at home. By the same reasoning, assuming for the moment that the profit in manufacturing does not pay a heavy dividend on all the stock issued, if a great hotel does not find its dining-room a source of profit, as many hotels do not, no private home should hope to prepare meals for its own members in competition with hotels.
As has been stated, every user of commercial fertilizer should learn what a pound of plant-food in unmixed material would cost him, selecting the common materials that are the only chief sources. If he can buy a pound of nitrogen in nitrate of soda or sulphate of ammonia, a pound of phosphoric acid in acid phosphate or steamed bone, and a pound of potash in muriate or sulphate of potash for less than they would cost in the factory-mixed goods offered him, allowing to himself a dollar or so a ton for the labor of mixing, it is only good business to buy the unmixed materials. The saving usually is from five to ten dollars a ton, excepting only interest on money, as he would pay cash for the unmixed material.
The cost of bags always is mentioned. That is not to be considered by the farmer, as he uses the bags in which the unmixed materials come to him.