Jasper County Democrat, Volume 16, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1914 — Why Not Follow Suit? [ARTICLE]

Why Not Follow Suit?

County Agent Barrett has been advising we farmers to get together and buy our fertilizers as raw materials and mix them ourselves, which he says without a doubt it’s as good as the factory mixed goods and in fact all with whom I have talked, that have tried it, back up his statement. 1 Recently the Farmers’ Organization of Marion township called a meeting and invited in some of the fertilizer agents to make bids on the amount wanted by the various men. Our county agent, Mr. Barrett, was unable to attend the meeting, but several of us had talked with him regarding the prices of mixing and proportions, etc., and a composite order of materials was made up to the amount of 28 tons of Mureate Potash and 53 tons of Acid Phosphate and the best prices which could be gotten were $40.50 a ton for the Mureate and $13.75 a ton for the 14 per cent Acid Phosphate and this amounts to $1,862.75. This amount of materials, so County Agent Barrett shows mo now, is equal to 82 tons of 5-13 and 33 tons and 400 pounds of 10-10 with 80 pounds of Mureate Potash left over. The price of both 5-13 and 10-10 from the same agent to whom the order was given is $23.50 a ton and at that price the amount of plant foods which we got would have cost us $2,707.20, so it is easily seen amongst us that we saved $844.45 or about one-third of the amount it would have co£t us, or slightly better than 44 per cent of the cost price.

Jasper county is one of the big fer-tilizer-using Bounties of the state and one in which I believe as County Agent Barrett says, that the land in general is not greatly in need of nitrogen and the other two elements of fertility which we need to pay attention to, being mineral elements and obtainable from commercial sources only, > we should pay attention to the elements of potash and phosphoric acid and get these from the cheapest possible source, and that without a question of a doubt, is in the raw state and purchased through the Farmers’ Organization. Why can not other townships get together and do as we did in Mat-ion? xx