Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 105, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1916 — WHY EUROPE GROWS BIGGER FARM CROPS [ARTICLE]

WHY EUROPE GROWS BIGGER FARM CROPS

_The European farmer uses 200 pounds of chemical fertilizer per acre of cultivated lands. The average use of fertilizers in the United States is twentyeight pounds per acre. As a result the comparative crop yields per acre in bushels of European and American farms are: Wheat. Oats. Barley. Potatoes Europe 32 47 88 168 United States 15 if 29 25 96 We mtisMncrease our crop yields pm acre if farming in this country Is te pay and if we are to continue to feed of living. To do so means using more chemical fertilizers, and at present prices or even normal before the war prices of both fertilizers and crop* tt

doesn’t pay to use more fertilizer on email grains and general farm and forage crops. The increased crop yield won’t pay for the fertilizer used to produce it In Europe the bigger crop yields pay because fertilizers are cheaper. The German farmer buys fertilizer for about half the price paid by the American farmer. We pay twice as much for potash to a German monopoly. We pay twice as, much for nitrates or ammonia to a Chilean mo noply. The nitrates are the most expensive element in fertilizers. European farmers are getting their supply Atom the air, made by water power. Onr water powers, which would give ua cheap fertilizers, arp not used. We must use the resources of the nation, not lock them out of use.— Woodrow Wilson.

Secretary Lane on Water Power. Under existing conditions, due largely to inadequate laws relating to the matter, a condition of stagnation exists, and water power resources are not being used. Existing law is not fitted for the uses to which it is put * * * There is that mystifying miracle of drawing nitrogen from the air for chemical use, which can be done only with great power, but is being done in Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, Switzerland and elsewhere, by which an inexhaustible substitute for the almost exhausted nitrates of Chile has-been found. To increase the yield of< our farms and to give us an indejsende&t au4 jifleamte. snpplx o| gen for the explosives used in war we must set water wheels at work will fix nitrogen in lime.—Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Inferior.