ARE PHOSPHATES IMPORTANT?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 60, 11 March 1944, Page 4

ARE PHOSPHATES IMPORTANT?

To the Editor. Replying to your correspondent "Alexander," writing on the above subject, I would quote the following statement by one of the recognised authorities in the world of agricultural research: "Life as we.know it without phosphates would be impossible. About one-half of every bone in one's body is phosphate. Phosphate circulates in the blood and supplies the muscles, nerves and brain with vital energy. We can easily understand, therefore, how vitally necessary it is that the soil producing the basic elements of life must contain plenty of phosphates." (P. H. Cutting, F.1.C.) Your correspondent takes the Department of Agriculture to task for not providing signs of its interest in the question of compost production as a means of maintaining soil fertility. The trouble lies not in the Department of Agriculture but in your correspondent, whose eye is shrouded by some back garden compost heap. The main underlying principle of the Department's teaching to-day and for years past has been to build up the humus content of the soil over the many million acres of grass and cultivated land that go to make up this Dominion. Topdressing with phosphates, lime or potash or all of these merely doubles or trebles the production of grass and enables a correspondingly greater number of "humus factories" to be carried That we get our butterfat, meat' wool, etc., from the livestock in the' meantime is only incidental to the great building-up programme that is going on all the time. W. ALEXANDER.