The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1914-07-16
A BIG LOSS

The annual loss in manure which is
not saved as fertilizer, amounts to
500, coo, 900 according to a statement
just issued by Guy f.. Youngburg, a
member of the chemistry force at the
State College and experiment station.
This is one-third of the plant 600
value of manure produced by farm ami
mails, a waste that is almost entirely
pT%eventable. This c~ar!essness," says
Mr.. Youngburg, tends toward the
blind use of artificial fertilizers, often
when unnecessary.
I'm this comparatively young farm
ing country one has been prone not to
regard the gradual depicting effects
going on or they have been unob-
served until crops can no longer be
proftably grown. Then the terrible
waste can be seen. A little foresight,
as Is row being advocated, is surely
necessary; in other words %conserva-
ton of plant-food in the soil by com.
nor sense methods must be taken ad-
vantage of. The use of farm produced
manure is one of them.
Considerably less than one-half of
the food material that passes through
the animal body is digested. Tt there
fore appears in the solid excrement.
Tho lnuid aynrap,apf &c rich II, mo-
terial that has passed through the pro-
cess of digestion. This means that all
digested food not used to make tissue
is simply TRANSFORMED into another
daily life. AS an example a protein
substance is changed by digestion into
urea-a product containing less energy
than the protein-but still very valu-
able for plant growth. Both the feces
and the urine are therefore valuable.
1t requires little calculation to say that
1t is very profitable to save all manure
and return it for further crops.
The use of fertilizers in the North.
western states is becoming a factor in
production although not to be compar-
ed to the large use of artificial fertil-
izers on the lands of the Eastern Unit
ed States, this of course for the reason
that our farms are comparatively
young and inexhausted. But as a
whole We already see slight depletion
Of n,r 20 ny, lands &c ayidnnnad hu tho
smaller returns upon land which has
under cultivation for twenty to
thirty years. The depletion is un-
doubtedly due to the removal and non
replacement of the plant food. Con.
tinual cropping only finally exhausts
certain plant nutrients. There are
ways of overcoming this: Remove no
plant food-or remove but replace it.
The first must be discarded as land
must be put to some use and not allow
ed to lie idle. Using the second meth
cd then it resolves itself into how to
replace the plant food which is with
drawn. This can be done by farm-pro-
duced or by artificial fertilizers. BY
the latter are meant such products as
n~itrates of potassium and sodium, phos-
phate rock, superphosphate, etc. You
may be told by statesmen for these pro-
ducts that they n comparatively in
expensive and bring great returns for
the outlay. This is sometimes true
but is there not some other method
which is better and even much less ex'
pensive for keeping the farm on the
level in nutritive matter? The farm
produced fertilizer Is the which
completes successfully so far as 1t a
be obtained. It includes mixed farm
manure, containing solid as well as
liquid excrements from all farm ami
mails. material used for bedding etc;
also green crop manures.