RE: The Chemistry of Farming - Book Review

["Paddy Apling" <e.c.apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis:
> Paddy, the issue is not whether chemical fertilizers can enrich the soil.
> By making an issue of this and evading the real issue, the review amounts
> to a cover-up. Chemical fertilizers are causing an enormous crisis not so
> much on the land, but in the WATER. For example, they leach into the
> Mississippi River and end up in the Gulf of Mexico. Everywhere they end up
> they speed the growth of algae which undermines fishing beds. This is
> elementary ecology. ABC, really. If you are going to proselytize against
> the Greens, I only wish you make an attempt to deal with their arguments.
>

Paddy:
The REAL issue IS just this as briefly explained in that book review.  It is
ONLY by applying the necessary fertilizer to the soil that crops yields can
be maintained - Liebig's Principle of the Minimum.

It is just not possible to maintain fertility at the levels required to feed
the present world population without the application of chemically-produced
nitrogenous fertilizer - not available in suffient quantity and price in so
much of the world.  When nitrogenous fertilizer is applied at the proper
period of growth there is little leaching (which would be just a waste of
good money for the farmer who applied it) - most leaching of nitrogen
compounds follows ploughing rather than fertiizer application, as studies at
Rothamsted Experimental Station over many years have shown.

There MAY be problems on the Mississippi (too far away from me to comemnt) -
but experience in the UK clearly shows falling nitrogen compounds in rivers,
and most of the high levels in UK ground water seems to have resulted from
the extensive ploughing up of meadowland for arable crops during WWII.   The
whole idea of applying fertilizer is to have it utilised by the crop - not
wasting it by leaching into water-courses !!!

It is very necessary to listen to those expert in agriculture and
agricultural chemistry before taking as gospel the rather simplistic views
propagated by the Greens.....   I have seen a very substantial clean-up of
the environment during the course of my professional life - and yet the
noise created by environmentalists (never heard of when I began my career)
has got louder and louder so that it is becoming impossible to have a
sensible discussion - as the number of "undisputable" myths increase.

Regards,
Paddy
NFHS Member #5594
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