NATURE 



447 



THURSDAY. DECEMBER 23, 1915. 



THE "WHEAT PROBLEM" AND 

 SYNTHETIC NITRATES. 



MANY years have elapsed and much water 

 has flowed under the bridges since Sir 

 William Crookes startled a heedless world by an 

 address, delivered in his capacity as president of 

 the Bristol meeting- of the British Association, 

 in which he drew a somewhat alarming- picture 

 of " the serious peril awaiting- wheat-eaters who 

 contentedly pursue the present wasteful system 

 of cultivation." He stated that in his opinion 

 under present conditions of culture a scarcity of 

 wheat is within appreciable distance ; that 

 ^wheat-growing land all over the world is becoming 

 (exhausted, and that at some future time — in his 

 )inion not far distant — no available wheat land 

 ill be left. The prediction was as doleful as 

 'the prospect was disquieting ; but fortunately the 

 remedy was comparatively simple and it was 

 near at hand. As the president pointed out, 

 Nature's resources, properly utilised, were ample. 

 The remedy consisted in a more scientific cultiva- 

 tion and, in particular, in the application of so- 

 called chemical manures, whereby, by moderate 

 dressings, the then average world-yield of 12 "7 

 bushels per acre would be increased to 20 bushels 

 — "thus postponing the day of dearth to so 

 distant a period that we, our sons, and grandsons 

 may legitimately live without undue solicitude for 

 the future." 



The main contention of this address was not 

 allowed to pass without vigorous criticism, and 

 a year later Sir William Crookes returned to the 

 charge with a small volume ^ in which he set out 

 in greater fulness the data on which his con- 

 clusions were based, with, however, the depress- 

 ii^ result that he was unable, in any material 

 d^ree, to modify his estimates of the future 

 producing capacity of the wheatfields of the 

 globe. 



The whole question is of particular interest at 



this present juncture, when the production and 



distribution of wheat have been seriously affected 



by the convulsion which has overtaken the world. 



Large areas in Europe have for a time gone out 



tof cultivation, and other districts, as in Russia 



id Rumania, are precluded from bringing their 



ipplies to the world's markets. A vast economic 



sturbance has resulted in an extraordinary and 



7 "The Whe.it Problem." By Sir William Crookes, F.R.S. (London: 

 Joan Murray, i8go ) 



NO. 2408, VOL. 96] 



altc^ether abnormal inequality of prices. Perhaps 

 no valid comparison is possible between a world 

 at peace where economic causes reach their legi- 

 timate and natural effects, and a world at w;ar 

 when almost every economic law is broken or 

 set at defiance. Still, it would be reassuring 

 to know that, in spite of the forebodings 

 to which " The Wheat Problem " gave rise, 

 measures are being taken to dispel them. As al- 

 ready stated. Sir William Crookes revealed to a 

 prospectively famishing world how it might escape 

 the horrors of starvation. "Starvation," he said, 

 "may be averted through the laboratory. Before 

 we are in the grip of actual dearth, the 

 chemist will step in and postpone the day 

 of famine." How was he to do it? By a 

 "dominant" manure — in this case some form of 

 fixed nitrogen. 



Now, whatever may be the real interpretation 

 of the facts to which we have referred, or what- 

 ever the intrinsic merit of the arguments based 

 upon them — and it cannot be said, even after the 

 lapse of the seventeen years which have inter- 

 vened since the address was delivered, that the 

 question has been definitely settled — it is common 

 ground that a wheat supply may be materially 

 enhanced by the intelligent application of nitro- 

 genous manures, one of the most important of 

 which is sodium nitrate or so-called Chile salt- 

 petre. This fact is universally recognised ; but 

 it is not so generally understood that the present 

 natural sources of sodium nitrate are by no means 

 limitless. Even now the rich beds in the rainless 

 districts in the northern provinces of Chile 

 between the Andes and the coast hills have been 

 nearly worked out. It is true that when the raw 

 "caliche," containing from 25 to 50 per cent, 

 nitrate, is exhausted at no very distant date, there 

 is a lower grade of material which may be worth 

 working. But the broad fact remains, and 

 we cannot escape from it, that the time is 

 approaching when we must seek some other 

 sources of supply. So far as we know, 

 the world has no other sources of the 

 naturally occurring product than Chile. We 

 must therefore look to the laboratory, and 

 we have a confident hope that the chemist will 

 not fail us. The synthetic production of nitrates, 

 adumbrated by a scientific use of the imagina- 

 tion, so far back as 1898, is now an accomplished 

 fact and a commercial possibility. Processes are 

 at work in various countries, and Germany, we 

 are told, is now independent of all outside sources 

 of nitrates, and her manufacturers have made such 



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