FORTIFY THE FUTURE WITH FERTILIZER

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 16

FORTIFY THE FUTURE WITH FERTILIZER

Never before in- New Zealand's history has superphosphate loomed so prominently as a vital factor in the national economy—indeed, in the economy of the’Empire. The reason for that, of course, is that superphosphate is going to play a very important part in the effort to increase*farm production to meet the Empire’s war needs. Great as is the need for increasing all forms of farm production and the urgency of increasing certain specified products such as pig meat, eggs, and cheese, there is another aspect of the world crisis which must not be overlooked. and which many already realize as equally important to the New Zealand farmer as is the more immediate problem of supplying Britain with those commodities she so urgently needs.

This involves Hie longer-range planning for the day when hostilities have ceased and when a starving Europe will be clamouring for supplies of foodstuffs of all kinds. This day, many experts consider, will mark the culminating point of the general plan—short range find long range-—to build up our farming production to its highest practicable level.

The short range plan—the plan for immediately exporting to Britain all those products she urgently neqds—and the long-range plan, which involves preparing for the day when a war-weary and hungry world will need everything in the way of foodstuffs, wool, and other products that we can export, are necessarily complementary. The progressive farmer, therefore, will realize that in planning for the one he may at the same time plan for the other. The pursuance of such a policy will undoubtedly result in lower all-over costs.

New Zealand’s huge annual volume of exports from the land have only been made possible by the use of superphosphate and its companion element lime. Approximately half a million tons of fertilisers have been used annually for some years past, but tins tonnage is expected to show a considerable increase from now onward. Of the total tonnage ’ of fertilizer hitherto used, about four-fifths, or 400,000 tons, has been superphosphate. Without the use of superphosphate it would have been utterly impossible for the farming industry to have reached its present high level of production of butter, cheese, meat and wool. How much more vital, therefore, is the influence of this fertilizer in any attempt to largely increase a volume of production already high? The supreme importance of largely increasing the manufacture of superphosphate has already been recognized not only by those directly concerned with the farming industry, but by the manufacturers of superphosphate. Those responsible for adequate supplies of superphosphate have already made their plans for increased output from their plants and expect to be able to fill every demand for increased supplies.

There are eight superphosphate manufacturing units in New Zealand, and prominent among them is Kempthorne, Prosser and Co.’s New Zealand Drug Company, Itd.’s, plant at Wanganui. Marketed under the familiar K.P. brand, the firm’s product has for many years played a very important part in increasing the fertility of the Dominion’s 1 farm lands. It is a fact that in the North Island of New Zealand there are many hundreds of thousands of acres of land that, in its natural state, is too poor for profitable farming. With the assistance of superphosphate those hitherto poor lands are today producing enormous quantities of primary products. It is a particularly significant fact that the highest per acre yields of butterfat and fat lambs are now being obtained from land that 25 years ago was considered as of comparatively little value. The explanation, of course, is superphosphate. The supplies of phosphate rock from which .New Zealand manufactures superphosphate come from Nauru and Ocean Islands, in the Pacific. The phosphate when mined in its natural condition is almost insoluble, and is not readily available to plant life. Plants take up their food in solution, hence the necessity for the elaborate manufacturing, processes the natural phosphate rock has to undergo before it can be brought to its maximum efficiency, so that it will go quickly, into solution. This condition of being soluble in water is brought about by treating the finely ground rock with sulphuric acid, and that treatment is an elaborate factory process which is carried out at the K.P. works along rhe most scientific lines yet discovered by the chemical world. •