The Monticellonian., 1908-04-30
FARMERS EDUCATIONAL COOPERATIVE UNION
 nr hnFnINl
GETTING SoIt FOOD.
How Marylanders Keep Out of The Trusts Clutches.
OF AMERICA

lruStS CIutches.
 Wheat growers in Maryland have for twenty or more years abandoned the purchase of ammonia in their fer tilizers, and in the meantime seen their crops nearly trebled in amount and their soil richer in nitrogen through the accumulation of humus from the decay Of legume crops. Is It not time for the cotton farmers of the South to begin to realize the vast waste of money and loss of crops they are making by depending year after year on a low.grade complete ferti- lizer, when they could get almost dou- Die the amount of the plant food needed by the legume crop for the same money?
 Letter after letter comes to me ask ing for formula for this, that and the other, the general impression be- ing that for every crop planted or sown we must provide a special fer. Itilizer, and failing to realize that in fl good short rotation with legumes there would only be needed a single appli- cation of fertilizer in three or four years, and that on the crop that in- ereases the forage for feeding to stock and increases the manure production. l was about to say, the manura pile; but in fact there should be no such thing on the farm, if the manure is used as it should be, spread on .le land as fast as made
 Fifteen million dollars worth of nj. trogen hanging over every acre and a farmer complaining that his land is poor. and he goes on paying 20 cents per pound for nitrogen in a fertilizer and his land remains poor, and he gets poorer, paying for what he could get free. The Almighty has put that nitrogen there so that the oxygen will be so diluted that we can breathe it. You need not fear that you will ex- haust the supply. for no matter how much you take, 1t is always going back to the air in every fire that burns and every manure pile that heats, and every animal that dies. You can take all that you can use of that fifteen million dollars worth and yonr bank account in nitrogen will never be over drawn; and as the fake advertiser says, It's free" and has no axe to grind But 1t is free only. to the man who does his part The all-cotton man walks through that sea of nitro gen enveloped in it's millions of dol lars and never gets a dollar of il, but pays his hard-earned dollars t0 the fertilizer man, who knows he Is q fool for doing it.
 Half the money now spent in com mefcial fertilizers in the South, if properly applied, would increase the cotton crop per acre far more than the present dribbling of fertilizer in the furrow, if good rotation was praeticed and fertilizers used only on the peas and crimson clover Under the system practiced by most cotton farmers, they belong to the fertilizer trust, and farming don't pay" The fact Is, that farming does pay, but the majority of the cotton growers are not farming at all, simply planting cotton and gambling on the chances with little S-2-2, one-fourth of which is poorer dirt than the farmer has already on his land. Two per cent of ammonia in a fertilizer will give in ton about thirty-four pounds of nitrogen. and when a man uses only about 200 pounds of this per acre, he spreads over that acre 34 pounds of nitrogen, or about half what the nat ural rainfall will bring him annually. What possible effect can such little nitrogen have on the crop? And yet in the 200 pounds he would pay about 70 cents for it per acre. The wheat growers in Maryland use mixture of 10 per cent phosphoric acid and