NA TURE 



.21 



THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1921. 



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The Potash Position. 



THE situation of Great Britain as regards a 

 due supply of potash is again attracting 

 attention, and the present moment may be looked 

 upon as opportune for briefly reviewing its lead- 

 ing features. Potash is one of the essential re- 

 quirements of a country like our own ; it is used 

 in many ways, mainly in various branches of 

 chemical industry, in glass manufacture, and in 

 agriculture, its application in the last-named 

 being by far the most important. Thus it 

 has been estimated that in 1913 the world's 

 consumption of potash (calculated as KgO) 

 was about 1,000,000 tons for agricultural 

 purposes, as against 135,000 tons for all 

 other purposes. Before the war this consump- 

 tion was supplied entirely by Germany, chiefly 

 from the mines situated in Germany proper — 

 namely, Stassfurt, Brunswick, Hanover, etc. — 

 and to a much smaller extent from the mines in 

 Alsace, then subject to Germany. All these mines 

 were in German hands, controlled by the Potash 

 Syndicate, which deliberately limited the Alsatian 

 output to 5 per cent, of the total, in order to pro- 

 tect the very large capital that had been invested 

 in the North German potash mines. In 1913 the 

 consumption of potash fertilisers (in tons of K2O) 

 was as follows : — 



NO. 2689, VOL. 107] 



Germaay 

 L'nited States 

 Holland 

 France 



Austria-Hungary 

 Russia 



Great Britain 

 Other countries 



980,082 

 In that year German land received just about 

 eight times as much potash per acre as did land 

 in this country ; it is true that our needs are less 

 in this respect than are those of Germany, first, 

 because our land is on the average much heavier 

 than that cultivated in Germany, thus needing 

 less potash, whilst it appears also to be richer 

 naturally in potash; and, secondly, because some 

 of the crops, such as potatoes, grown in Germany 

 on a far larger scale than here, require more 

 potash. In spite of this, however, there seems 

 little doubt that this country could use with great 

 advantage very much larger quantities of potassic 

 manurial agents than it has done in the past. 



Given the raw materials, the preparation of the 

 various finished products is relatively a simple 

 operation so far as chemical manufacture is con- 

 cerned, so that the question whence we are to 

 obtain the necessary supplies of potash can be 

 answered only by a study of the natural sources 

 available. Before the war these came, as has 

 been seen, wholly from the vast deposits of potas- 

 sium-bearing salts under German control. Since 

 the recovery by France of the lost provinces of 

 Alsace-Lorraine, our Ally has now resumed pos- 

 session of the Alsatian potash deposits. These 

 deposits are far more important than their re- 

 stricted production under the German regime 

 would have implied. They underlie an -area of 

 some 200 square kilometres, lie relatively flat at 

 a depth of some 600 metres, are up to 4 metres 

 in thickness, and are estimated to contain about 

 1500 million tons of crude potash salts. In 

 their mode of occurrence, therefore, they present 

 very great advantages over the steep-lying, con- 

 torted North German deposits, which lie beneath 

 heavily watered strata, and can be won 

 only by means of difficult and costly methods 

 of shaft-sinking. Above all, the Alsatian de- 

 posits are immensely superior in chemical 

 composition to their North German com- 

 petitors ; they are much richer in potash, for 

 whereas the German crude salt averages about 

 ID or 12 per cent, of K2O, the French deposits 

 contain a proportion that is variously stated as 

 between 18 and 25 per cent, of KgO; moreover, 



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