BRAND NAMES. 



The law requires that each package or lot of fertilizer 

 offered for sale shall be sold under a distinguishing name, 

 brand or trademark. This means of identification of a 

 particular brand gives the manufacturer an opportunity 

 to give to each brand which he manufactures a name in- 

 dicative of the material of which it is composed, or of the 

 particular crop to which it is best adapted. Unfortunately 

 instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to give 

 the consumer valuable information he very often abuses it 

 by giving to his different brands, names which are in- 

 tended to attract the attention of the consumer but which 

 are partially or wholly misleading. A study of the brand 

 names of the fertilizers in the following pages shows that 

 only about 10% of the brands have names which indicate 

 even fairly accurately the particular crop to which the 

 fertilizer is best adapted while about 45% have names 

 either entirely misleading or at least deserving of no espe- 

 cial consideration. About 20% of the brands have an 

 accurate descriptive name such as Ground Bone, Dried 

 Blood, Tankage, Nitrate of Soda, Muriate of Potash, etc. 

 The remaining 25% have a combination name consisting 

 of a descriptive part frequently more or less misleading 

 and numerals giving the percentage composition of am- 

 monia, total phosphoric acid and water-soluble potash. 

 The use of numerals is a highly satisfactory method of 

 identifying the different brands although this information 

 is furnished in the guaranteed analysis. In reading the 

 numerals in the brand name the purchaser must remember 

 that the nitrogen is expressed in terms of its equivalent 

 in ammonia and the phosphoric acid in terms of total 

 rather than available phosphoric acid. In selecting fer- 

 tilizers the consumer should give attention to the guaran- 

 teed analysis and to the nature of the materials of which 

 it is composed rather than to the brand name. 



THE PRICE OF FERTILIZERS. 



The following prices are those paid at retail by the con- 

 sumers in this state as furnished by the Inspector, com- 

 pared with those taken from a Report on the Retail Prices 

 of Nitrate of Soda and Acid Phosphate as of May 1, 1919, 

 published by the Bureau of Soils, United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, Department Circular 39. In this 

 report it is stated that the wholesale price of 16%, acid 



