AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH & FERTILISER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 23 November 1927, Page 9

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH & FERTILISER

PRACTICAL INTEREST IN BRITAIN,

IMPORTANCE TO THE EMPIRE.

The Imperial Agricultural Research Conference, which held its meetings in Britain during the month of October is of vital importance both to the industry of agriculture as a whole and to the development of the Empire. The importance of scientific research to the farmer has often been stressed by leading authorities, ami cannot be too much or too often stressed. It has also been practically demonstrated over and over again. The importance of concerted and co-ordinated agricultural research from the broad Imperial .viewpoint is equally vital. The object of the Conference was ta explore the way towards co-ordina-tion of agricultural research throughout the Empire, and to ensure a pooling of the results of research and a prompt application of new discoveries. Never l>efore has there lieen a conference for research workers in agriculture throughout the Empire, and never before has the knowledge and experience of the Empire been gathered together in order to take common counsel about the development of their greatest Imperial industry.

As Mr Guinness, the Minister for Agriculture, pointed out at the opening of the Conference, even in crowded Britain, where everyone seems to be packed into towns and cities, the value of the yearly agricultural output is £225,000,000, whilst in the vast dominions about eighty per cent, of the population make their livelihood by cultivation of the soil. In tropical parts of the Empire, where diseases of man and of plants and animals are so rife, the value of scientific research is too obvious to demand proof. As a single Instance we may take Ross’s work on malaria, which has saved thousands of workers in tropical regions from illness and death. There are striking instances also where plant nests and cattle plagues have been succesiully combated and hundreds of thousands of pounds saved to Empire farmers.

Insects and pests are estimated to destroy ten per cent, of the world’s crops even’ year, and twenty ner cent, of crops that are grown in the tropics. These figures sufficiently show what a wide field there is for agricultural research throughout the Empire, and what a paying proposition is can be when successful.

The biggest contribution of science to farming is undoubtedly artificial fertilisers. One of the most instructive and interesting of the visits of the Imperial Research Conference was paid to the tiny Durham village of Billingham, where a huge nitrogen fertiliser factory has been established since the war.

Only four or five years ago the site of the great Billingham fertiliser works was little more than a. wilderness on the north bank of the river Tees. To-day. where once stood the little village and the isolated farmhouses is a huge factory, or almost, one might say. a collection of factories with structures of gifantie proportions. with miles of grotesquelooking gantries and pipe-bridges, with a network qf railway sidings, with, magnificent otfice biddings, while nearLy is a modern-garden village of three hundred bouses. Millions of. capital have been employed in this gigantic project, absolutely the last word in modern machinery has been installed, and the factory already gives employment to between four and five thousand workpeople. Moreover, this is only as it were the beginning. The future will see the capacity of the factory quadrupled, and even newer and perhaps even more important industries will be added to the new’ one already established. Sir Alfred Mond, chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries. Ltd., of which. the Billingham factory is a subsidiary, said in his message of welcome to the delegates of the Imperial Agricultural Research Conference. “1 would like to say how very glad we all here are to see representatives from everv corner of the farflung British Empire gathered together to discuss the most important and most anccient of all industries and how it can be improved. The agricultural problems of the Empire are diverse in many wavs, but they have at least this as a great common factor—their attitude towards the use of fertilisers.” PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS. Nitram Limited, the company which controls Billingham Fertiliser Works and their numerous experimental farms and allied interests, has also established a research station, with upwards of 400 acres of farm lands; where problems relating to the use of fertilisers and to the feeding of stock are to be investigated. One of the most important subjects which will be undertaken at the Research Station is the experimental enquiry as to the synthetic ferihsers most suitable to overseas requirements, lor it is evident that the synthetic manufacturing activities of Billingham are not likely to be confined to the manufacture of simple nitrogenous fertilsers. such as sulphate of ammonia, but will extend to the production of what may be called dual and triple fertilisers. Some soils require mainly one ingredient, say nitrogen; some soils require both nitrogen and phosphates, or nitrogen and potash, and all intensively cultivated soils require frequent applications of nitrogenous potassic and phosphatic fertilisers. Therefore, the producers of the synthetic fertilsers of the future will be engaged in the manufacture of what may be called simple, dual and triple fertilisers. There will be sulphate of ammonia or synthetic nitrate or urea, etc., to supply the nitrogen requirements of the soil; there will be ammonium phosphates for the soils which need both nitrogen and phosphates; and there will complete chemical compound fertilisers, containing the three chief nlant foods, to be used bv all who cultivate the land' intensively. nitrogen, phosphates and POTASH FORM THE TRINITY. It is certain that great prosperity will come to those countries which are first to seize and npplv the new and great opportunities which Present themselves now that the synthetic manufacture of fertilisers is an established fact.