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Prejudice Against Commercial Fertilizers

Categories: THE NEED OF COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS

The owner of land that was

made very fertile by nature, and that has not been cropped long enough

to reduce the supply of available fertility to the danger-point, rarely

fails to entertain a prejudice against commercial fertilizers. It is

the rule that he refuses to consider their use until the decrease in

crop yields becomes so serious that necessity drives. If his land is

not contributing its fair share of grain, veg
tables, etc., to the

markets, but has all its products converted into meat or milk, the

supply of available plant-food may remain sufficient for so long a time

that the matter cannot have any interest for him. If the land is

producing some crops for market, there is reduction in its mineral

store. It is the rule that the boundary of profitable use of commercial

fertilizers pushes westward from the older and naturally poorer

seaboard states about one generation after need shows in the crop

yields. Lack of knowledge, the association of the use of commercial

fertilizers with poor land, and some observation of the unwise use of

fertilizers, combine to create a lively prejudice. They are viewed as

stimulants only, and costly ones at that.



Are Fertilizers Stimulants?--Some words carry with them their own

popular condemnation. We are accustomed to draw a sharp line between

foods and stimulants, and to condemn the latter. To stimulate is to

rouse to activity. Tillage does not add one pound of plant-food to the

soil, and its office is to enable plants to draw material out of the

soil. It makes activities possible that convert soil material into

crops. Fertilizers add plant-food directly to the soil, and it is also

to their credit that their judicious use favors increased availability

in some of the compounds already in the soil. The greater part of the

labor put on land is designed to make plant-food available, either by

providing moisture, or ease of penetration of plant-roots, or activity

of bacteria, or other means that will permit plants to remove what they

need for growth. Fertilizers supply fertility directly and indirectly,

but it is their direct service in meeting a deficiency in plant-food

that affords all needed justification for their use by practical

farmers.



Referring to the thirty years' soil fertility experiments of the

Pennsylvania station, Hunt says that they "show that there is nothing

injurious about commercial fertilizers. For thirty years certain plats

in this experiment have received no stable manures. No organic matter

has been added to the soil except that which was furnished by the roots

and stubble of plants grown. These plats are not only as fertile as

they were thirty years ago, but they have yielded, and continue to

yield, as good crops as adjacent plats which have received yard manure

every two years in place of commercial fertilizer."



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