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## MINING PHOSPHATE AND LOADING CARS NEAR COLUMBIA, TENN.

All plants from tiny grasses to the largest trees get their food from the ground. Plants, that people do not disturb, pay back to the soil the food they take from it. Their leaves, parts of their branches, or their stalks fall to the ground each year and decay there. When rain falls, part of the water soaks into the ground taking with it some of this decayed matter. Some roots, also, decay in the ground. Such decayed matter, called humus, is good plant food.

Farmers do not allow their plants to fall to the ground and decay there. Instead they harvest their crops and send them to market. If this is done year after year the time comes when the soil has very little plant food left in it. Then the farmer says his land is not fertile and that he cannot raise any more crops on it.

What should the farmer do? He should stop

being a robber and pay back to the soil what he has taken from it. Modern, successful farmers do this in several ways. Some plow under the ground certain plants. Some spread manure on the land. Others buy fertilizers and add them to the soil. These fertilizers may be made of ground bone, sewage, or certain minerals. One material used to make fertilizer is phosphate.

In this view you can see phosphate being mined and loaded on cars. These mines are in Tennessee and there are others in many places in the South, especially in Florida, South Carolina, and Kentucky. The cars will take the phosphate to a near-by factory where it will be made into fertilizer.

*What kinds of fertilizer have you seen used?*
Some farmers help their soil by rotating their crops. *Do you know what that means and how it helps the soil?*

Copyright by The Keystone View Company

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