Will the Chemist Compete with Farmers? 
T HE FARMER’S PART.—The farmer is engaged 
in the most important of the chemical indus¬ 
tries, the conversion of the elements into food. Be¬ 
cause his occupation is thus basically chemical, it 
would seem that he must in some measure find com¬ 
petition coming from those who are factory chem¬ 
ists. How much need the farmer fear the chemistV 
The best way to answer that question is to reduce 
the farm occupations to their simplest terms: to cut 
away all the complexity and consider the essentials 
only. 
WHAT THE FARM MAKES.—The farmer makes 
three kinds of food—starch, fat and protein. The 
chemistry of these is fairly well understood. Could 
the chemist ever make these 
more cheaply than the farmer 
does? In the case of starch, a 
corn crop of two and one-lialf 
billion bushels is made from the 
raw products: Carbon dioxide, 
which is in the air, and costs 
nothing. Water, Avhicli costs 
nothing, except in the case of 
irrigated land. Mineral salts, 
which are in the soil, except 
when they are added as fertilizer. 
About 70 per cent of the corn is 
starch, or 87.500,000,000 lbs., 
which is made from wafer and 
carboji dioxide. The am/ount of 
energy required to make a pound 
of starch from water and carbon 
dioxide is known exactly, and we 
can say that it. would take 
875.000.000.000 lbs., or 4f57.500.000 
short tons of coal, assuming that 
only 00 per cent of the energy of 
the coal is lost as heat and 10 
per cent converted into chemical 
energy in the starch. 
COST OF STARCH—Figuring 
the cost of the coal at $5 a ton. 
then the starch in the corn would 
cost $2,187,500,000 for fuel used 
in making it alone, without 
labor, overhead or anything else, 
but just on the basic require¬ 
ment of energy to replace the 
farmer’s use of the sun’s light. 
There isn't any possibility of 
ever making starch without using 
so much energy, or from any¬ 
thing’ cheaper. Starch must give 
out that much energy when it 
burns as food within the body, 
and that energy must be stored 
in it if it is starch. 
ITU>TEIN MAKINC.—Protein 
is made within the plant: it is a 
part of every cereal, and in this 
form is always a farm product. 
However, the farmer also con¬ 
verts this into animal protein in 
the form of meat, eggs, milk or 
cheese. Protein is enormously 
complex: Emil Fischer, perhaps 
the greatest organic chemist who 
ever lived, devoted a large part 
of his life labors to the study of 
protein. He was able to make, 
in very small quantities, a ma¬ 
terial comparable with the sim¬ 
pler proteins. There is no chance 
whatsoever that the chemist can ever make artificial 
protein and certainly no substitute can ever be found 
for it. 
FAT.—This is the simplest of the three basic food¬ 
stuffs. This the farmer produces as vegetable fat (in 
the corn germ, for instance) or as animal fat. Fat is 
a simple substance when compared with protein or 
starch. It seems probable that it will be possible to 
make the acids of fat from mineral oil. but it is 
doubtful whether the product will bo suited to any¬ 
thing but making soap. There is no chance of ob¬ 
taining a delicate flavored product like butter, and 
if is also problematic whether the cost can be made 
low enough to compete with cheap vegetable oils. 
The farmer then has nothing to fear from the chemist 
with respect to the production of foods as a basic 
process, though fat for certain purposes may prove 
an exception. 
THE CHEMISE’S INFLUENCE.—Now it does 
not follow from what has been said that the chemist 
will be without influence on the farmer's future. 
Essentially the two lines are similar and they must 
influence each other. While the production of food, 
considered as a whole, cannot pass in any way from 
the control of the farmer to that of the chemist, yet 
it must not be overlooked that the economic balance 
among the food producers may be very appreciably 
affected by the chemist. Once having the basic 
foodstuffs, it remains to prepare these for actual 
consumption. In this operation the chemist may 
influence the farmer. For instance, he may by a 
suitable treatment produce a milk substitute from 
Soy beans or peanuts, which, though it cannot re¬ 
place milk as a whole diet, can be used as a part of 
a diet, or in confectionery. Notice that in this the 
chemist is not taking the place of the farmer as a 
producer: he is enabling the farmer of one crop to 
sell his crop to better advantage. If we assume that 
artificial milk may become very important, that 
means merely that the peanut crop gains at the 
expense of the dairy. The chemist found how to 
convert cottonseed oil into a hard fat: that was to 
the advantage of the cotton grower, and allowed him 
to compete with the packer. 
FUTURE FARMING.—It is probable that the 
growing of yeast as a foodstuff will become an estab¬ 
lished industry. It will simply mean that a new 
kind of farming will be carried on in future. It 
would be possible to write a very interesting series of 
articles to show how the growth of chemical meth¬ 
ods of treating food has helped certain lines of 
farming at the expense of others, but always chem¬ 
istry has helped the farmers as a whole community 
engaged in producing the world's food, rt should 
not be forgotten that the chemist is all the time im¬ 
proving the means which he places at the farmer’s 
disposal to aid him in his business: fertilizers, 
agricultural poisons, sprays, methods of soil testing, 
methods of controlling quality, special methods of 
analysis, all these are being improved. Recently if 
would seem as though the chemist were destined to 
take a hand in enabling the farmer to utilize his by¬ 
products. The alkaline treatment of straw promises 
to make available an enormous amount of fodder. 
Other similar processes remain to be discovered. 
There is very much to be expected by the farmer in 
more aid from chemical methods 
—he has nothing to fear and 
everything to gain by close co¬ 
operation with the chemist. 
R. E. ROSE. 
R. N.-Y.—In that remarkable 
book. “Creative Chemistry,” the 
author, Dr. E. E. Slosson. tells 
how the chemists have been able 
to develop soft fats so that they 
can be used with hard fats for 
cooking or making oleomargarine. 
The chief ingredients of fats and 
oils are: 
Linoleic acid. C M II 32 0 2 
Oleic* acid. Ci»II. H 0 2 
S tearic aci d. (’,,11 
This means that in stearic acid 
there is a combination of 18 parts 
of carbon, .°>(5 parts of hydrogen 
and 2 parts of oxygen. The 
others, as we see. have the same 
amounts of carbon and oxygen, 
but less hydrogen. This differ¬ 
ence in the amount of hydrogen 
means that the less hydrogen the 
lower the melting point. That is, 
fatty substances low in hydrogen 
are apt to be liquids: those with 
more hydrogen are apt to be sol¬ 
ids. Hard fats are needed to 
make suitable cooking or eating 
compounds, and thus naturally 
some treatment of linoleic acid is 
necessary to make it into a hard 
fat like stearic acid. For instance, 
I)r. Slosson says that if you put 
a bottle of salad oil in the ice 
box it will separate into two 
parts. A white solid will sepa¬ 
rate out as stearin. The rest will 
remain a liquid—largely olein. 
The chemists have learned to 
harden these soft fats in the most 
natural way—by inducing them 
to take up extra hydrogen. The 
needed hydrogen.is obtained from 
water, which, as most of us know, 
is composed of one part oxygen 
and two parts hydrogen. This 
Water can be split up into its two 
components by means of an elec¬ 
trical current, or by passing 
steam over spongy iron. This 
takes out the oxygen, and the 
hydrogen is collected by itself 
But adding the hydrogen to an 
^organic substance is not like mix¬ 
ing two substances with a spoon. There must be* a 
chemical action. To bring this about a “catalyst” is 
list'd. There are certain substances which bv tlieir 
presence cause a chemical union between two sub¬ 
stances which otherwise might not combine. The 
“catalyst” does not itself pass into the new combina¬ 
tion—its mere presence makes the combination pos¬ 
sible. Usually finely ground metals are used for this 
purpose. For these fats nickel is used. A salt of 
nickel is mixed with charcoal and pumice and heated 
in a current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into a 
tank of the oil or soft fat. and hydrogen gas is 
blown through. This unites with the soft fats and 
finally changes the linoleic acid to stearic acid by 
adding four parts of hydrogen. 
Dr. Slosson says that by this process even a foul- 
smelling fat like fish oil (which contains 28 parts of 
hydrogen) may be used for making soap or even 
food. If is even stated that during the war the 
The Candle Maker 
fhe old-fashioned caudle seems to most of us a very primitive form of lighting, though we 
always keep.a box on the farm. The candle represents one of the first great advances in chem¬ 
ical application, and was in its day as great an advance in artificial lighting as our modern 
electric light 
