Chapter 42

PURCHASING PLANT-FOOD

Necessity of Purchase.--The necessity of buying plant-food in the form of commercial fertilizers is a mooted question in any naturally fertile agricultural region just so long as crop yields do not drop to a serious extent. The natural strength of the land and the skill that enters into the farming are important factors in determining the profitableness of recourse to purchased plant-food. The free use of organic matter to maintain the supply of humus defers the time when commercial fertilizers should be used. Good tillage frees the potential plant-food of the soil, and delays the day of necessary purchase. The farm so situated that it can have all its products fed upon it is longer independent of outside help. The profitable use of feeding-stuffs from other farms is a safe way of escaping the direct purchase of fertilizers, although it is a transfer of fertility to the farm as surely as the employment of fertilizers, and is not a method that may have general adoption.

The organic sources of fertility, such as slaughter-house refuse, are containers of plant-food as surely as is stable manure. The inorganic sources, such as acid phosphate and muriate of potash, are containers of plant-food as surely as is animal bone or blood. There is no line that may be drawn to debar any substance that supplies plant-food profitably and contains no compound harmful to the soil.

The purchase of plant-food should begin whenever profit is offered by it, and in connection with its use there should be good tillage, organic matter, and healthful plant conditions in every respect. The use of a fertilizer pays best when the conditions are such that the plants can avail themselves of it in the fullest degree. Good farming and the heavy use of commercial fertilizers go consistently hand-in-hand.

Fertilizer Control.--The dreams of the patent-medicine vender never pictured more favoring conditions for his activity than were found by fertilizer manufacturers and agents before state laws provided for inspection and control. Men who wanted to do a legitimate business welcomed protection from the unscrupulous competition that dishonest men employed. The memory of some of the frauds perpetrated lingers, and causes a questioning to-day that is unnecessary. All fertilizer-control laws afford a good degree of legal protection to the buyer, although in most states they do not demand a clearness and fullness in statements of analyses that would be helpful to many, and they fail to require that sources of plant-food be given. Some fertilizers are sold for more than they are worth, and some are bought for soils and crops that need other kinds of plant-food, but this is due to lack of knowledge on the part of the buyer that he can acquire. The law does its part in the work of protection better than many buyers do their part. It has driven fraudulent brands off the market, compelled carefulness in factory-mixing, and given to the intelligent buyer a knowledge of the kinds and amounts of plant-food in the bag or ton. The sampling is done by disinterested men, and the analyses are made by competent chemists. There need be little distrust of the analysis as printed on the bag, unless a failure of the manufacturer to keep his goods up to the standard has been made public in the state's fertilizer bulletin.

Brand Names.--Notwithstanding all that has been done by the state to acquaint the buying public with the composition of fertilizers, many purchasers are guided in selection by the brand name, and that usually is fanciful in character, no matter whether it be "Farmers' Friend" or "Jones' Potato Fertilizer." In either case it may be far from friendly to soil or pocket-book, and widely at variance with the needs of the soil for which it is purchased. The pretense of making a fertilizer peculiarly adapted to the potato, or to wheat, or to corn would not attract a single buyer if the public would compare the analyses of these special crop fertilizers offered by manufacturers and note their dissimilarity of composition. Any kind of a mixture may be given any kind of a name. It is the composition that counts. The farmer is in the market for nitrogen and phosphoric acid and potash, singly or combined, for a certain soil, and all he wants is to know the number of pounds he is getting, its availability, and its price per pound. Any added detail not required by law is an impertinence.

Statement of Analysis.--It would be well if the law refused to the manufacturer the privilege of printing unnecessary detail in the statement of analysis that must be placed upon the fertilizer bag. It is added to confuse the buyer and mislead him regarding actual value. The following statement is an example of this practice:

ANALYSIS

Per Cent Nitrogen 0.82 to 1.00 Equal to ammonia 1.00 to 2.00 Soluble phosphoric acid 6.00 to 7.00 Reverted 2.00 to 3.00 Available 8.00 to 10.00 Insoluble 1.00 to 2.00 Total 9.00 to 12.00 Potash (actual) 1.00 to 2.00 Equal to sulphate of potash 2.00 to 3.00

As the row of larger figures is not guaranteed percentages, it has no value.

The buyer is not concerned regarding the amount of ammonia to which the nitrogen is equal, and so the second line is a needless repetition.

The fifth line gives the sum of the third and fourth, the available being the total of the soluble and reverted. Therefore the third and fourth lines may be ignored.

The sixth line gives the percentage of unavailable phosphoric acid in the rock, and should be ignored by the purchaser who wants available plant-food.

The seventh gives the sum of the available and insoluble, and should be ignored.

The ninth is a restatement of the eighth line.

There then remains the following guaranty:

Per Cent Nitrogen 0.82 Available phosphoric acid 8.00 Potash 1.00

This is a low-grade fertilizer whose cheap character becomes apparent when the unnecessary statements and restatements are erased. A ton of it contains only 16 pounds of nitrogen, 160 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 20 pounds of potash.

Valuation of Fertilizers.--The manufacturer of a mixed fertilizer must make use of the unmixed materials he finds upon the market. The prices of the various plant constituents in the different unmixed materials can be determined by averaging quotations in leading markets for a given length of time. The fair retail price is obtained by adding about 20 per cent to the wholesale cash price. The retail cash price per pound of the plant constituents in leading markets is thus determined for their various forms and carriers. A pound of nitrogen in dried blood may have its valuation fixed at a figure 50 per cent higher than that of a pound of nitrogen in nitrate of soda simply because the dried blood sells at a price per ton that makes that difference. It is true commercial value that is sought, and that may be very different from agricultural value.

The mixed fertilizer of the manufacturer has its content of plant-food known by analysis. Its number of pounds of the various constituents in a ton is known, and the retail price per pound of these substances has been fixed. The commercial value per ton can then be determined, provided proper allowance is made for cost of mixing and bagging. The individual must pay in addition the freight, and usually a considerable sum for unnecessarily costly methods of distribution and collection.

A Bit of Arithmetic.--This paragraph is intended to serve the man who is willing to be reasonably near right if he cannot be wholly so: A ton is 2000 pounds, and one per cent is 20 pounds. In dealing with fertilizers it is the practice to call 20 pounds, or one per cent of a ton, a unit, and to base the price of the nitrogen, and phosphoric acid, and potash, on the unit. This is done for convenience. If five cents is a fair price for a pound of available phosphoric acid in one's locality, as it would be if a ton of 14 per cent acid phosphate cost $14, a unit of 20 pounds is worth $1. Each one per cent guaranteed is thus worth a dollar, and the phosphoric acid in the fertilizer is easily valued. If a pound of potash in a ton of muriate is worth five cents in one's locality, as it would be if a ton of muriate cost $50, the muriate being one half actual potash, a unit of 20 pounds of potash is worth $1. Each one per cent of guaranteed potash is thus worth one dollar, and the entire content of potash is easily valued. If a pound of nitrogen in nitrate of soda is worth seventeen and one half cents a pound in one's locality, as it would be if a ton of nitrate of soda cost $54, a unit, or one per cent, is worth $3.50, and the content of nitrogen is easily valued.

The prices named would seem high to good cash buyers near the seaboard, and they are too low for some other regions where freights are very high. They are only illustrative. The consumer can get his own basis for an estimate by obtaining the best possible cash quotations from city dealers. Some interested critic may point out that nitrate of soda should not be the sole source of nitrogen in a fertilizer on account of its immediate availability. Manufacturers use some sulphate of ammonia, and a pound of nitrogen in it has had practically the same market price as that in nitrate of soda. Tankage may be used in part, and in it the nitrogen costs very little more per pound.

It may be said that the potash in the fertilizer is in form of sulphate. Usually that profits the user nothing, and often the claim is baseless, but if it is a sulphate, the cost of the potash should have only 20 per cent added to the valuation of the potash, which usually will not add one dollar to the total cost of the ton of mixed fertilizer. Basing the valuations of the pounds of plant-food in the mixed fertilizer on the value per pound in unmixed materials delivered to one's own locality, there must be taken into account the added expense of mixing.

High-grade Fertilizers.--A high-grade fertilizer is not necessarily a high-priced one. What we want in a fertilizer is a high content of the plant-food needed, together with desirable availability. If only phosphoric acid is wanted, a 14 per cent, or 16 per cent, acid phosphate is high-grade because it contains as many pounds of available phosphoric acid in a ton as the public can buy in a large way. A 10 per cent acid phosphate is low-grade. The effort is to escape paying freight, and other cost of handling, on waste material as far as possible. Generally speaking, the higher the percentages of plant-food in a fertilizer, the cheaper per pound is the plant-food. A low-grade fertilizer rarely fails to be an expensive one because the expense of handling adds unduly to the price per pound of the small content of plant-food.