The log cabin Democrat. [volume] (Conway, Ark.) 1901-1982, 1908-04-30
FARMERS EDUCATIONAL
COOPERATIVE union
- or AMERICA -
GETTING SOIL FOOD.
How MaryIanders Keep Out of The
Trusts Clutches

INV Wal yidHoCFS NCCp ouI OF ne
Trusts Clutches.
Wheat growers in Maryland have
for twenty or more years abandoned
the purchase of ammonia in their fer
tilizers, and in the meantime seen
9their crops nearly trebled in amount
and their soil richer in nitrogen
through the accumulation of humus
from the decay of legume crops. Is
at 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 lowgrade complete ferti-
aizer, when they could get almost dou-
hble the amount of the plant food
needed by the legume crop for the
same money?
Letter after letter comes to me ask
ing for a 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
Eilizer, and failing to realize that in
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
creases the forage for feeding to stock
and increases the manure production.
II was about to say, the manure pile;
Ibut in fact there should be no such
thing on the farm, if the manure is
used as it should be, spread on the
Hand as fast as made.
Fifteen million dollars worth of nj
trOgen hanging over every acre and
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, it 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 your bank
account in nitrogen will never be over
0IdWu, anu tHC ldhc duNel llScl
says, Its Free" and has no axe to
grind. But it is free only to the man
who does his part. The all-cotton
man walks through that sea of nitro
gen enveloped in its millions of dol
lars and never gets dollar of it, but
pays his hard-earned dollars to the
fertilizer man, who knows he is fool
2for doing it.
Half the money now spent in COM
unercial fertilizers in the South, il
properly applied, would increase the
cotton crop per acre far more than
the present drbbling of fertilizer in
the furrow, if a good rotation was
practiced 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 a little S-2-2, one-fourth of
which is poorer dirt than the farmer
mas already on his land. Two per
cent of ammonia in fertilizer will
give in a ton about thirty-four pounds
of nitrogen, and when man uses only
about 200 pounds of this per acre, he
spreads over that acre "a 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
20 cents for it per acre. The wheat
growers in Maryland use mixture
OF 10 per cent phosphoric acid and