6io 



GA RDENERS MA GA ZINE. 



September i 7i i898 



Food Supplies and Land Fertility. 



As stated in our issue of the ioth inst., Sir W. Crookes devoted the earlier part 

 of his presidential address at the opening meeting of the British Association at 

 Bristol to a discussion of the wheat supplies and the maintenance of the fertility of 

 the land. This section of the address is of much importance and we make a few 

 extracts from it that are likely to be of special interest to our readers. 



Wheat Supply of the United Kingdom. 



In his opening remarks, Sir W. Crookes said : — I owe an apology to this 

 brilliant audience. I must ask you to bear with me for ten minutes, for I am afraid 

 what I now have to say will prove rather dull. Statistics are rarely attractive to a 

 listening audience ; but they are necessary evils, and those of this evening are 

 unusually doleful. Nevertheless, when we have proceeded a little way on our 

 journey I hope you will see that the river of figures is not hopelessly dreary. My 

 chief subject is of interest to the whole world — to every race — to every human 

 being. It is of urgent importance to-day, and it is a life and death question for 

 generations to come. I mean the question of food supply. Many of my state- 

 ments you may think are of the alarmist order ; certainly they are depressing ; but 

 they are founded on stubborn facts. I am constrained to show that our wheat- 

 producing soil is totally unequal to the strain put upon it. After wearying you 

 with a survey of the universal dearth to be expected, I hope to point a way out of 

 the colossal dilemma. It is the chemist who must come to the rescue of the 

 threatened communities. It is through the laboratory that starvation may be ulti- 

 mately turned into plenty. The food supply of the kingdom is of peculiar interest 

 to this meeting, considering that the grain trade has always been, and still is, an 

 important feature in the imports of Bistol. The imports of grain to this city 

 amount to about 25,000,000 bushels per annum— 8,000,000 of which consist of 

 wheat. The consumption of wheat per head of the population (unit consumption) 

 is over six bushels per annum ; and taking the population at 40,000,000, we require 

 no less than 240,000,000 bushels of wheat, increasing annually by 2,000,000 

 bushels, to supply the increase of population. Of the total amount of wheat con- 

 sumed m the United Kingdom we grow 25 and import 75 per cent. It has been 

 shown that at the best our stock of wheat and flour amounts only to 64,000,000 

 bushels— 14 weeks' supply— while last April our stock was equal to 10,000,000 

 bushels, the smallest ever recorded by "Beerbohm" for the period of the same 

 season. Similarly the stocks held in Europe, the United States, and Canada, 

 called the " the world's visible supply," amounted to only 54,000,000 bushels, or 

 10,000,000 less than last year s sum total, and nearly 82,000,000 less than that of 

 1893 or 1894 at the corresponding period. To arrest this impending danger, it 

 has been proposed that an amount of 64,000,000 bushels of wheat should be pur- 

 chased by the State and stored in national granaries, not to be opened, except to 

 remedy deterioration of grain, or in view of national disaster rendering starvation 

 imminent. This 64,000,000 bushels would add another 14 weeks' life to our popu- 

 lation. Assuming that the ordinary stock had not been drawn on, the wheat in 

 the country would only then be enough to feed the population for 28 weeks. I 

 do not venture to speak authoritatively on national granaries. 



Possibilities of Home Production of Wheat. 



. More hopeful, although difficult and costly, would be the alternative of grow- 

 ing most, if not all, our own wheat supply here at home in the British Isles. The 

 average yield over the United Kingdom last year was 29.07 bushels per acre, the 

 average for the last II years being 29.46. For 12 months we need 240,000,000 

 bushels of wheat, requiring about 8,250,000 acres of good wheat -growing land, 

 or nearly 13,000 square miles, increasing at the rate of loo square miles per 

 annum, to render us self-supporting as to bread food. This area is about one- 

 ourth the sue of England. A total area of land in the United Kingdom equal 

 to a plot 1 10 miles square, of quality and climate sufficient to grow wheat to the 

 extent ot 29 bushels per acre, does not seem a hopeless demand. It is doubtful, 

 however, if this amount of land could be kept under wheat, and the necessary 

 expense ot high farming faced, except under the imperious pressure of impending 

 starvation, or the stimulus of a national subsidy or permanent high prices, 

 certainly these 13,000 square miles would not be available under ordinary 

 economic conditions for much, perhaps all, the land now under barley and oats 

 would not be suitable for wheat. In any case, owing to our cold, damp climate 

 and capricious weather, the wheat crop is hazardous, and for the present our 

 annual dehcit of 180,000,000 bushels must be imported. A permanently higher 



E£! 1 W i Cat ,S ' 1 ¥ r » 8 01,8 "ity that ere long must be faced. At enhanced 

 prices, and now under wheat will be better farmed, and therefore will yield 



,mi«-' t . 8 T ng ■ m ^ ased Production without increased area. The burning 

 question of to-day », What can the United Kingdom do to be reasonably safe 

 irom starvation in presence of two successive failures of the world's wheat harvest, 

 or against a hostile combination of European nations ? We eagerly spend millions 

 to protect our coasts and commerce, and millions more on ships, explosives, guns, 

 ana men ; but we omit to take necessary precautions to supply ourselves with the 

 very fust and supremely important munition of war— food. 



th consum P tion of wheat, including seed, has slowly increased in 



K i ,k Mn S d f om to *e present amount of six bushels per head per annum ; 



food 



and 



present 



, ~"o„ t ,3 yd uim per annum 



at the present time is 4-5 bushels. Under 



In£ C T h ° t rela j n its dominant position amongthe food-™ . w.™, 



wrw rn ^ij of the i m p ending catastrophe no one can predict, but its 

 K oirection is obvious enough. Should all the wheat-growing countries add 

 ° ,,,''-" ea to t . he at ™st capacity, on the most careful calculation the yield 

 worlH 3 m r° n y *? add , ,t,on o{ some 100,000,000 acres, supplying at the average 

 suntel • 127 b r UShek t0 the acre > 1,270,000,000 bushels, ]ust enough to 

 nrSnt r ° f P°P uIation «■<** bread-eaters till the year W At the 



present time there exists a dehcit in the wheaf of 31.000 



sq 



miles — a 



the world 



«™ W masked by the fact that the ten world croos 



yS r r S s "fen 896 WCre TV^ 5 P« cent S 



uSS'lik^^L S T 5ha . U ^ ve been made » if possible, to feed 230,000,000 



where cin 1*> <»ZmZ >\ nv . e tem perate zone now partially occupied— 



what ^w i \ f H rea l fa,ls -^tonlyus, but all the bread-eaters of 



superior to us in numbers, b2kffi i ?!i^. wh ^^ , L i^!L£lES !!*!* 

 are eaters of Indian corn rice mm ? g V * del y in material and intellectual progress, 



have the food value, the'conce a ° lher S rains » but none of these g^ns 

 on this account that'the accn T j heal th- sustaining power of wheat, and it is 

 apart at the fit and prooer f s , f ated . ex P e nence of civilised mankind has set wheat 

 production of wheat d^A« the dev elopment of muscle and brains. Cheap 

 countries. 



Kingdom ai 



India 66s. , and in Russia 54s. We require cheap labour, fertile u>i1 . 

 portation to market, low taxation and rent, and no »vL • y trans 

 Labour will rise in price, and fertility diminish as the ^ rSsite 

 stituents in the virgin soil become exhausted. Facility of Sn^Vf "? anunaI con- 

 will be aided by railways, but these are slow and ^S^^T^ 

 not ppy to carry wheat by rail beyond a certain distance. Thl miStS^ 

 show that the price of wheat tends to increase. On the other hand th a™* 

 impediments of taxation and customs duties tend to diminish as demand^n^S 

 and prices rise. "greases 



Salvation by Chemistry. 



I have said that starvation may be averted through the laboratory. Before 

 we are in the grip of actual dearth the chemist will step in and postpone the dlv 

 of famine to so distant a period that we, and our sons and grandsons, maj 

 egitimately live without undue sohci ude for the future. It is now recogn3 

 that all crops require what is called a " dominant » manure. Some need ni train 

 some potash, others phosphates. Wheat pre-eminently demands nitrogen fixed 

 in the form of ammonia or nitric acid. All other necessary constituents exist in 



the soil; but nitrogen is mainly of atmospheric origin, and is rendered " fixed 

 by a slow and precarious process which requires a combination of rare meteoro 

 logical and geographical conditions to enable it to advance at a sufficiently rapid 

 rate to become of commercial importance. There are several sources of available 

 nitrogen. The distillation of coal in the process of gas making yields a certain 

 amount of its nitrogen in the form of ammonia ; and this product, as sulphate of 

 ammonia, is a substance of considerable commercial value to gas companies But 

 the quantity produced is comparatively small ; all Europe does not yield more 

 than 400,000 annual tons, and in view of the unlimited nitrogen required to sub- 

 stantially increase the world's wheat crop, this slight amount of coal ammonia is 

 not of much significance. For a long time guano has been one of the most im- 

 portant sources of nitrogenous manures, but guano deposits are so near exhaustion 

 that they may be dismissed from consideration. Much has been said of late years 

 and many hopes raised by the discovery of Hellriegel and Wolfarth, that legumi- 

 nous plants bear on their roots nodosities abounding in bacteria endowed with the 

 property of fixing atmospheric nitrogen; and it is proposed that the necessary 

 amount of nitrogen demanded by grain crops should be supplied to the soil by 

 cropping it with clover and ploughing in the plant when its nitrogen assimilization 

 is complete. But our present knowledge leads to the conclusion that the much 

 more frequent growth of clover on the same land, even with successful 

 microbe seeding and proper mineral supplies, would be attended with uncertainty 

 and difficulties. . The land soon becomes what is called " clover sick " and turns 

 barren. There is still another and invaluable source of fixed nitrogen. I mean 

 the treasure locked up in the sewage and drainage of our towns. Individually the 

 amount so lost is trifling, but multiply the loss by the number of inhabitants, and 

 we have the startling fact that in the United Kingdom we are content to hurry 

 down our drains and water courses, into the sea, fixed nitrogen to the value of 

 no less than ^16,000,000 per annum. This unspeakable waste continues, and no 

 effective and universal method is yet contrived of converting sewage into corn. 

 Of this barbaric waste of manurial constituents Liebig, nearly half a century ago, 

 wrote in these prophetic words : « 1 Nothing will more certainly consummate the 

 ruin of England than a scarcity of fertilizers— it means a scarcity of food. It is 

 impossible that such a sinful violation of the divine laws of Nature should for ever 

 remain unpunished ; and the time will probably come for England sooner than 

 for any other country, when, with all her wealth in gold, iron, and coal, she will 

 be unable to buy one-thousandth part of the food which she has, during hundreds 

 of years, thrown recklessly away.* The more widely this wasteful system is ex- 

 tended, recklessly returning to the sea what we have taken from the land, the 

 more surely and quickly will the finite stocks of nitrogen locked up in the soils of 

 the world become exhausted. The store of nitrogen in the atmosphere is prac- 

 tically unlimited, but it is fixed and rendered assimilable by plants only by cosmic 

 processes of extreme slowness. The nitrogen that with a light heart we liberate 

 in a battleship broadside has taken millions of minute organisms patiently working 

 tor centuries to win from the atmosphere. 



The only available compound containing sufficient fixed nitrogen to be used on 

 a world-wide scale as a nitrogenous manure is nitrate of soda, or Chile saltpetre. 

 This substance occurs native over a narrow band of the plain of Tumarugal, in 

 the northern provinces of Chile between the Andes and the coast hills. In this 

 rainless district for countless ages the continuous fixation of atmospheric nitrogen 

 by (he soil, its conversion into nitrate by the slow transformation of billions of 

 nitrifying organisms, its combination with soda, and the crystallization of the nitrate 

 have been steadily proceeding, until the nitrate fields of Chile have become of 

 vast commercial importance, and promise to be of inestimably greater value 10 

 the future. The growing exports of nitrate from Chile at present amount to about 

 1,200,000 tons. The present acreage devoted to the world's growth of wheat is 

 about 163,000,000 acres. At the average of 127 bushels per acre this giv 

 2,070,000,000 bushels. But thirty years hence the demand will be 3,260,000,000 

 bushels, and there will be difficulty in finding the necessary acreage on which to 

 grow the additional amount required. By increasing the present yield P er acrc 

 from 127 to 20 bushels we should with our present acreage secure a crop of the 

 requisite amount. Now from 127 to 20 bushels per acre is a moderate increase 

 of productiveness, and there is no doubt that a dressing with nitrate of soda will 

 give this increase and more. The action of nitrate of soda in improving trie 

 yield of wheat has been studied practically by Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry 

 Gilbert on their experimental field at Rothamstead. This field was sown with 

 wheat for thirteen consecutive years without manure, and yielded an average o 

 11 9 bushels to the acre. For the next thirteen years it was sown with wheat, ana 



soda 



an 



being present. The average yield lor mesc ycurs ™« ^ <* — r- . , , 



S bushels. In ntw ^nr^ lb. of nitrate of soda producer 



of 



acres 



increase of 24-5 bushels. In other words, 22 '86 lb. of nitrate ot 

 an increase of one bushel of wheat. At this rate, to increase the 

 wheat by 7*3 bushels, about 1 C wt. of nitrate of soda must annually be appWJ 

 to each acre. The amount required to raise the world's crop on ^,ooo,cm 



from the present supply of 2,070,000,000 bushels to the require 

 3,260,000,000 bushels will be 12 million tons distributed in varying amounts <*a 

 the wheat-growing countries of the world. It is difficult to get » sl *«™J 

 estimates of the amount of nitrate surviving in the nitre beds. Common rumou 

 declares the supply to be inexhaustible, but cautious local authorities state that a 

 he present rate of export, of over one million tons per annum, the raw mater* 

 « caliche," containing from 25 to 50 per cent, nitrate, will be exhausted * frow 

 jo to 30 years. Dr. Newton, who has spent years on the nitrate held*. 

 there is a lower class material, containing a small proportion of niuate. *ru 

 Profit* 41 prCSent be Bsed > but which may ultimately be manufacturea 



Apart from a few of the more scientific manufacturers, no one is ""jf^ 

 enough to think this debateable material will ever be worth ™kng. » 

 assume a liberal estimate for nitrate obtained from the lower grade deport, 



