PLANTS AND NITROGEN.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15886, 26 July 1923, Page 8

PLANTS AND NITROGEN.

GERMANY PRACTISES IT. Without a doubt the scientific Hun has set about the task of beating his sword into a ploughshare in a very thorough manner. Credulous folk about us are apt to speculate on the poor conditions under which the German people as a whole are living, and economists of all nations are trying to devise means of obtaining reparations from Germany without interfering in any way with basic economic lays. But in the midst of all this fuss, Germany is quietly restoring her pre-war vigour and enterprise. To commence with, she is essentially a manufacturing nation, but, like most Continental countries, has striven to produce the great bulk of her primary products. We all know the German as a scientist, but it has been mostly from the strictly industrial point of view that we have appreciated his attainments. He has now extended the scope of his operations to embrace agriculture, and we may await with interest the developments that will ensue.

Germany has always been a heavy user of nitrates, both for agricultural and commercial purposes, and in this coonnection it is interesting to read that during the year 1914 Germany’s imports of nitrate of soda from Chili were 770,000 tons. In 19020 only 40,000- tons of that commodity were imported. There may he many reasons for this falling off, but there is one outstanding factor which must not be lost sight of. At Oppau (incidentally the place where most of the Boche’s asphyxiating gas was made during the war), a huge plant has been installed, and by a process known as the Haber process, nitrogen is being extracted .from the air. It was estimated that the plant would turn out about 300,000 metric tons of synthetic ammonia annually, but unfortunately for their calculations the appalling explosion of 1921 has so devastated the plant and surorunding district that the output capacity of the organisation has been reduced to nil.

Undoubtedly the nitrogen obtained was to be put to a variety of uses, but on such a high plane do they put their sugar beet industry that the prime object of the Oppau works was the production of synthetic ammonia for the fertilisation and revival of this branch of German agriculture, and to bring new life into their pasture lands. The prolongation of the war till 1918 provides evidence that Germany was cultivating every available acre of ground, so that it is only natural, after such a prodigious effort on the part of the soil, some do not linger unduly over the progrowing influence should be returned to it..

The Chemical Age, in an article on the Oppau works, mentions that a company has been formed, subsidiary to the Oppau company, with a capital of 500,000,000 marks, to advance loans to agricultural consumers of their synthetic ammonia, so that the enterprise savors of a national undertaking. It would appear from the journal quoted, and it is, interesting to note that agriculturists have at last become convinced, that sulphate of ammonia is more than the equal of Chilian nitrate, and as the former is a bi-product of every gas and coke producing plant in Australia, we have this fertiliser in ample quantities right at our very door. The strict conservation of farmyard manure is a feature of Continental farming, but it would seem that there is not sufficient of this cheap and excellent form of fertiliser to meet requirements. With the aid of rich, nitrogenous fertilisers, however, an optimistic German professor entertains hopes of being able to make pasture lands carry just twice as much stock as they do at present. When he has achieved that, farmyard manure becomes a negligible quantity.