CHAPTER XIV 



COMMERCIAL FERTILISERS 



ONE OF the most striking features of 

 American agriculture is the extraordinary 

 rapidity with which the commercial fertil- 

 iser industry has developed. Bone, wood ashes 

 and a few other natural products have been 

 in use for centuries, but the first use of artifi- 

 cial fertilisers the "phosphates" of the modern 

 farmer was about 1845. Not till after 1860, how- 

 ever, were they used to any great extent. The 

 annual fertiliser bill of American farmers to-day 

 is close to fifty millions of dollars. This is paid 

 mostly by the farmers of about twenty of the 

 Eastern States, for commercial fertilisers are used 

 very little in most of the Western States. 



In round numbers, we have paid about a quarter 

 of a billion of dollars for artificial fertilisers in the 

 last five years. In no other country are commercial 

 fertilisers used to the extent they are here. Yet 

 only a small per cent, of our farm soils have shown 

 the need of fertilising. When the millions of acres 

 of rich, Western farm lands have passed through the 

 same history of gradual decline as those in the East 

 as they certainly will what will our fertiliser bill 

 be, a hundred years hence ? Where is this enormous 

 and rapidly increasing expense account leading us ? 

 Are the results secured by the present lavish 

 use of artificial fertilisers sufficient to justify us in 

 continuing the practice or is there a cheaper way 

 of solving the problem of declining fertility ? 



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