The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1911-04-28
WHAT MAY COME FROM AMERICAS
SUICIDAL EXPORTATIONOF PHOSPHATES
HENRY g. cATLN POINTS OUT DANGERS AND ITS
EFFECT THE coUNTRVs CROPS

DWeakens the edif1ce we rear topples
in ruin. That the foundation of our
economic life, our welfare and that
OF our children, be made and kept in
condition to upbear the structure we
have built and to put added weight
upon it concerns us all. The founda-
tions of life, physical, social, econo-
mic, rest upon the soil.
Imagine a man with the early
symptoms of disease clearly defined
in him depicting his veins of their
life blood and for a price selling it
to anaemic customers-fool, suicide,
we would call him. What we would
thus condemn in the individual we
are now doing as nation. We are
selling our blood, for we are export
ing our phosphorus.
Of all the constituents of the food
OF man-plant, beast, bird, or fish
phosphorus is least abundant In the
| soil or most difficult of replacement.
By the cultivation and blowing under
of clover and other legume plants,
whose function is to draw it from the
air and make It available in the soil,
nitrogen can be abundantly supplied;
potassium, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon,
calcium, and other necessaries Of
plant life are supplied from ample
stores in the soil or are easy of at
tainment. Phosphorus alone is of
limited supply in the soil; neither
the air above the land or the moist
ure that falls on it can give that; It
must come from some outside source.
Some normal soils have more some
less, but the average virgin agricul-
tural land of the country contains to
the depth of cultivation, say seven
inches, one ton of phosphorus to the
acre; definite quantity from which
IL any Ihil6 10 IohSH IL MuoI Uo io-
placed or the productive capacity of
the land is lessened. If the total
phosphorus contents be a, and b the
quantity that is distracted from it
by one crop, then and remaining phos-
phorus; or, if the crops are grown,
then a-10b--the phosphorus left in
the soil
The average new land of the corn
belt has, to the depth of cultivation,
less than a son of rhos-
phorus An average first crop from
an acre of such land has been eighty
bushels Of corn. The eighty bushels
of corn contained 1876 pounds of phos-
phorus-the cob and stalk AS
pounds, or 1874 in both. If the grain
and stalk are removed from the land,
the total phosphorus would but sup
ply the needs of 100 of such crops.
If the grain is fed and the stalk fed
or plowed under, percentage of the
phosphorus not gone into bone or
meat may be returned.
Whatever Of grain or stalk, loot,
fruit, bone, flesh or blood is removed
from the acre ON which it grew re-
duces by the quantity remaining. I'm
der average conditions little more
than l per cent. of the total rhos-
phorus is available for and enters in
to single crop, nature slowly feed
ing it to the growing plants.
Throwing aside the accidents of
drought or excess OF moisture, heat
or cold, crop from the virgin soil
of the corn belt, and of eighty bush
els of corn to the acre, should con-
tinually repeat itself if the plant food
of the ground be kept up. But forty
five years of corn crops from this
very land have dropped from an av-
erage of eighty bushels to the acre
to one of forty bushels. The phos-
phorus has so decreased that the
per cent. of it available is only
enough for one-half of the former
yield. 1t is idle to try to supply ex-
ira nitrogen or potassium or other
plant food The situation demands
phosphorus. Nothing else will an
swer; that it must have.
Aside from what the straw or stub
BILE of the grains, the portion of the
plant not harvested, and the manures
made from whatever is fed on the
farm contains, the farmer in bone
and fish may in a small way return
to the soil. That in the
grain or vegetables he sells is gone,
and if he feeds the product of his
soil to animals but small part OF it
comes back in the manures.
There is but one source from which
can come in quantity,and
that the phosphate rocks. OF all
countries the United States has the
largest known supply of them.These