VALUE OF PHOSPHATES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 April 1938, Page 9

VALUE OF PHOSPHATES

KEY TO LASTING SOIL FERTILITY DIMINISHING SUPPLY CAUSES ALARM. ROLE IN MODERN WARFARE. WASHINGTON, March 8. The lifetime of our civilisation depends on economy in the use of phosphates, the Tennessee Valley Authority has told President Roosevelt, and he is shortly to tell Congress and the country.

Last week at his press conference, the President somewhat mysteriously announced he was about to divulge information on the distribution of phosphates around the world which would be of first-rate interest to the American public and Congress. The information, it turns out, has been gathered by TVA officials, and is included in their annual report. They have been studying the phosphate situation because the law under which TVA is established specifically directs examination of the improvement of plant foods and reducing the cost of fertiliser to the farmer. KEY TO FERTILITY. In their research, these officials have turned from nitrogen to agricultural phosphorous as the key to lasting soil fertility, and they see a diminishing supply—not necessarily gravely alarming, but still demanding national attention.

‘The life of civilisation in the world,” the TVA report says, “is measured by reserves of rock phosphate available to make up the unavoidable yearly losses caused by civilised life.”

The total known world supply, experts estimate, is about 16,000,000,000 tons. Of this, the United States owns about 6,500,000,000 tons; the U.S.S.R. is said to own nearly 5,500,000,000 tons located near Archangel; and France owns possibly 3,500,000,000 tons, mostly in North Africa. The remaining 500,000,000 tons is scattered around the world in small quantities. Additional beds may be discovered in Africa, Asia, or South America, but it is estimated that no large phosphate beds remain undiscovered on United States territory.

Not only is phosphate essential to civilised life, but it plays a vital role in that offshoot of civilisation called modern warfare. Yellow phosphorus is used for smoke screens and incendiary shells. Use of phosphates to stimulate legumes as a source of farm nitrogen, reduces the demand for nitrates and releases them for war uses.

“Phosphorus is the backbone of civilisation,” says the TVA annual re'port. “Civilised life has taken many forms and doubtless will take new forms that we do not now anticipate. At present, we may be passing out of the coal-and-steel age into the elec-tricity-and-alloy age, but we can never pass out of the age of phosphorus until we abandon civilisation itself.” SIGNS OF DEFIENCY. With the rise of city life, phosphates which in a non-eroding purely farming community' returned to the soil, begin to be lost. Consumption of phosphates in the cities, ultimately to be lost, and in soil that is washed away into the sea, is constantly cutting down the available supply more than direct use is doing. When animals and crops lack phosphorus, directly or indirectly, they grow “listless and torpid,” says the report, adding that here and there in the world are human populations already beginning to show signs of phosphorus deficiency.

About 3,000,000 tons of rock phosphate are mined in the United States each year, mainly in Florida and Tennessee, and about 1,000,000 tons are exported. “Since the lifetime of our civilisation depends on economy in the use of this key mineral,” says the report, “the export of phosphate should be regarded as a national concern, although a satisfactory adjustment of international relations might well be important enough to justify such a sacrifice. The determination of the quantity and destination of phosphate exports should therefore be a function of the Federal Government as a matter of foreign policy.” DEMAND WILL DECLINE.

If the present losses of phosphate were to go on indefinitely, American visible reserves would be good for only a few hundred years. But the situation is not so bad as that. “When we succeed in putting 20,000,000 tons of phosphate on the land,” says the report, “we shall practically stop the loss of the soil, and soon the yearly demand for new fertiliser will be greatly reduced. In the second place, the new electric furnace process permits the use of lower-grade phosphate deposits, and thus greatly enlarges our effective national reserve.”

The TVA authorities have succeeded in producing a new phosphate concentrate, looking like amber or horehound candy, which they call “metaphos.” It is not damaged by weather, and can be transported in gondola cars like coal, yet it carries about 63 per cent, of plant food, a very high figure. EXPERIMENTS PLANNED.

“By means of the metaphos process,” they say, “with plenty of electric current, such as will be available in the Northwest, it may be feasible to utilize the great deposits of Idaho and the adjoining States.” Senator James P. Pope, of Idaho, already has prepared and submitted to the President an executive order authorising the TVA to experiment with western phosphates. But the authorities are apparently already convinced that all they need is permission to go ahead.

Idaho deposits are in the southeastern part of the State, extending into Wyoming and Utah, and 650

miles from Bonneville Dam and 500 miles from Grand Coulee, the two principal new sources of abundant electrical power in the Northwest. To ship electrical power that distance would be a tall order, but not entirely impossible engineeringly, although the usual estimate of shipping radius is 250-300 miles. It might be possible to ship the ore part way, or the nature of the market —being industrial and not a large city market —might make longer shipment of power feasible.

In any event, the Administration has at hand—with details to be worked out—an attractive new outlet for its vast power surplus in the Northwest, and in this light the whole phosphate question is io be considered.