Recent experiments with baking crushed or pulverized phosphate rock in hightemperature electric ovens has fully demonstrated the fact that as much as 40 per cent of soluble acid phosphate for plant food can be extracted from this crushed phosphate rock without the excess of free sulphuric acid which retards plant growth by souring the soil. Such electric method increasing the available acid phosphate from 16 per cent to 40 per cent for plant food increases the plantfood value 250 per cent and relieves the necessity of liming the soil at additional expenses to the cost of production of food crops. and adds largely to the yield of the soil. and thereby cheapens food products to the ultimate consumer. The increasing large quantities of commercial fertilizersfor the increasing necessity of larger yields of foodstuffs to supply the need of a larger population. now increasing in America at the rate of about 2.000.000 per annum. born in and immigrating to America. besides our exports of foodstuffs to foreign countries. will demand larger and larger quantities of such commercial fertilizers. It is estimated that about 10.000.000 tons of fertilizers or more. valued at $250.000.000. are now consumed annually in the United States. while about $40.000.000 to $50.000.000 go abroad in excess of our exports of phosphate rock. largely for the ammonia and potash ingredients of these fertilizers. Ammonia being the highest priced-$60 per 100 poundsthe most volatile. and the least plentiful. except as nitrogen in the air. how important. then. it becomes to farmers. producers. and consumers of such foods in the United States that such an allimportant and valuable agricultural fertilizer as ammonia should be made as cheaply as possible from the inexhaustible supply of nitrogen in the air20.000.000 tons to each square mile of the earths surfaceand. not only. not needed to sustain animal and human life. but poisonous to both when not combined with the oxygen.
Keywords matched
immigrating