72 BOARD OF AGKICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



phosphate contams. I mention these cases as illustrations 

 of the possible ways in which a farmer may come to exer- 

 cise the same careful judgment in buying raw material for 

 plant building that he would in purchasing nails, lumber 

 and paint for constructing a house. There is nothing im- 

 possible or unreasonable in this suggestion. It is made in 

 the interests of economy, and because of a desire to reform 

 our haphazard methods of l)uying plant food to the extent 

 of millions of dollars annually. 



I would say to the farmer who wishes to rise to the higher 

 plane of deliberately controlling his own plant-food supply, 

 that there are two requisites for doing this. First, he must 

 inform himself in regard to the composition of fertilizing 

 materials, in order to know what to buy and how to make 

 mixtures. Second, he must study his needs by the use of 

 the unmixed, so called, raw materials. No crop grower 

 will ever hnd out the special plant food deficiencies of his 

 soil, if such exist, or the influence of certain ingredients 

 upon the quality of his crops, by the use of the ordinary 

 factory-mixed goods. He must at least dictate his own 

 combinations, so as to know, for instance, whether the 

 introduction of potash is profitable or otherwise. 



(5) Granting, then, that a farmer may come to intelli- 

 gently dictate his own plant-food supply, in what way shall 

 he buy his nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash? The an- 

 swer to this question involves the market side of buying 

 plant food. This is an old topic, somewhat threadbare, 

 perhaps, but let me state some of the considerations which 

 lead me to bring it forward. 



In August of this year the New York Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station published the results of the analyses of 313 

 brands of fertilizers. We found, taking their average com- 

 position and average selling price, that the nitrogen was 

 costing New York farmers 17.3 cents per pound, the avail- 

 able phosphoric acid 6.8 cents and the potash 6.2 cents. 

 About the time that we had arrived at these figures, a 

 shrewd farmer of Ontario County came into my office and 

 asked for advice in mixing a fertilizer. He said : " I can 

 l)uy acid phosphate guaranteed to carry 14 per cent avail- 

 able phosphoric acid at $12 per ton, and high-grade muriate 



