No. 4.] COMMERCIAL PLANT FOOD. 75 



a time, with a very conservative class of customers, most 

 of whom were ignorant about fertilizers and many of whom 

 could onl}'^ make purchases on credit, perhaps the results 

 are as good as could have been expected. But has not the 

 time come for a reform? After twenty years of agricult- 

 ural schools, experiment stations and farmers' institutes, 

 are not our most intelligent and most prosperous farmers 

 ready to shun these unnecessar}' expenses, this haphazard 

 method of buying, and, after learning what they need, buy 

 it for cash in the cheapest desirable forms that the market 

 offers? The manufacturer certainly should not object to 

 this method. His profits will not be reduced, I am sure. 

 It is the method adopted in the cases of home mixing to 

 which I have referred. 



I know objections are made to the home-mixing method 

 of buying plant food. A sweeping argument often made 

 is, "You station men have been advocating it for a long 

 time, and it makes no headway." It has made headway, 

 slow, to be sure, but as rapid as most movements requiring 

 the education of the masses. It is said that the farmers 

 are not well enough informed nor sufficiently provided with 

 capital to l)uy intelligently and pay cash. This is true of 

 some farmers, and until they, or their circumstances 

 change, they will continue to pay the tril)ute that has 

 always been exacted of poverty and ignorance. The claim 

 is made that farmers cannot mix fertilizers so that they will 

 handle satisfactorily, because when thus prepared they are 

 either not fine enough to be used with seed drills or be- 

 cause such concentrated materials l)ecome sticky after 

 keeping and stirring. Both of these difficulties can be 

 obviated by proper precautions, as observation and experi- 

 ence have shown. But home mixing is not a condition 

 essential to a more rational method of buying plant food. 

 If the manufacturer is willing to do so, there is no reason 

 why he should not mix any formula which a farmer, or any 

 body of farmers, may desire to use ; nor is there any 

 reason why a special contract should not be made with a 

 manufacturer to sell a certain quality of some existing 

 l)rand of superphosphate, provided it represents what the 

 farmer believes he needs, and can be bought as cheapl}' as 



