Tons Of Fertilizer Research Articles

Erosion and climate

To the Editor — The calculations offered by Quinton et al.1 raise the unfortunate notion that soil erosion generates an unintentional benefit for climate, owing to the long-term burial of soil organic carbon. But limiting the assessment of the impact of soil erosion on climate change to organic carbon burial ignores, apart from economic and social damages, the coupling between biogeochemical cycles. For example, the eroded nitrogen has to be replaced, at least in part by artificial fertilizers, to maintain soil fertility. At this point the carbon and nitrogen cycles meet, because the production of fertilizer generates greenhouse gases; the production of one ton of fertilizer in the United States generates more than 850 kg of carbon dioxide2. Applying this number to the estimate by Quinton et al. of the amount of nitrogen lost owing to erosion each year1 yields carbon dioxide emissions of 0.02–0.04 Pg yr−1. These emissions correspond to 15–30% of the organic carbon buried owing to soil erosion1,3. Obviously the full complexity of biogeochemical cycling on agricultural land is not reflected by the crude calculation above. However, the example illustrates that all greenhouse gas fluxes affected by agriculture should be considered when assessing the impact of soil erosion on global biogeochemical cycles and climate. ❐

Columbarium Towers and Other Structures In the Environs of Shivta

This paper presents new evidence of pigeon-breeding in the Negev in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Field research conducted between 2000 and 2004 identified and studied four towers in the environs of Shivta. The towers were constructed for the purpose of raising of pigeons, which provided both meat and fertilizer. Each tower potentially housed 1000-1500 breeding pigeons, with an annual yield of up to 9000 chicks and 15 tons of fertilizer. Other buildings studied in the area were a masonry tomb that was part of Shivtas cemetery and an agricultural watchtower.

Fertilization practice in Finnish forest nurseries from the standpoint of environmental impact

In 1996 a questionnaire concerning actualsystems and practices used in production ofseedlings was sent to 33 Finnish forestnurseries. A total of 28 nurseries answered thequestionnaire. These replies represented about80% of the total production of forestseedlings in Finland. The nurseries used about200 metric tons of fertilizers in 1996, whichwas about 25% of the fertilizer use in 1976.Explanations for the decrease in fertilizationare the shift from bareroot production tocontainer production and the decrease in totalproduction from 190 to 150 million seedlings.Finnish nurseries applied about 100 mg N and50 mg P per container seedling shipped, and820 mg N and 240 mg P per bareroot seedling.The mean annual applications of N and P in 1996were about 180 kg/ha and 90 kg/ha for containerstock and 130 kg N/ha and 40 kg P/ha forbareroot stock. However, the variation betweennurseries was large.

The Hubris of the Engineers

Essay Reviews THE HUBRIS OF THE ENGINEERS Prisoners ofMyth: The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933— 1990. By Erwin C. Hargrove. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi + 374; notes, index. $45.00. Aren’t you tired of bureaucratic and political interference with your professional life? Don’t you get sick of the senseless obstacles thrown up against your efforts to do your job as only you know how best to do it? After all, everything is so plainly delineated by the canons of your profession that people should have faith in your disin­ terested expertise. They should know that your peers in the profes­ sion, who are the only properjudges, will evaluate your performance and reward or punish you accordingly. If this is the way you think, then think again. Better yet, read this book. Has Erwin Hargrove got a story for you! It’s a full-fledged scholarly analysis of a great organization trapped by its own ideology of professionalism. It’s a story with a brilliant beginning and a disas­ trous ending. And, although Hargrove does not choose to tell it in quite this way, it’s an epic, a bona fide Greek tragedy. Like all epics, it starts with unforgettable dramatis personae. First comes Senator George W. Norris, determined to keep the World War I project Wilson Dam, with its precious electricity, from falling into the hands of the “power trust.” Presidents Coolidge and Hoover veto Norris’s bills. But then comes Franklin D. Roosevelt, who strengthens and signs Norris’s bill and sets out to make the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) a crown jewel of the New Deal. In 1933, enter three more players, TVA’s uncommonly talented initial Board of Directors. They are the eccentric but profound engi­ neer Arthur E. Morgan, the venerable agriculturist Harcourt A. Morgan, and the brilliant young lawyer David E. Lilienthal. These three do the job marked out by Norris and Roosevelt. They do it extraordinarily well, and they stay at it for a long time. Arthur Mor­ gan feuds with his colleagues and has to be fired by Roosevelt in 1938. David Lilienthal remains until 1945 when, now world famous, he leaves to chair the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1948, Harcourt Permission to reprint a review printed in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 1007 1008 Thomas K. McCraw Morgan retires at the age of eighty-one, more beloved in the valley than ever. Together the three founding directors accomplished what historian Henry Steele Commager once described as “probably the greatest peacetime achievement of twentieth-century America.” Working with an elite staff that came to exceed 40,000 dedicated men and women, many of them available only because the Great Depression had killed employment prospects elsewhere, they built a series of gleaming dams to tame the wild Tennessee River. In the process, they created a chain of lakes forming a 600-mile inland waterway with terrific recreational facilities. In a swords-to-plowshares operation, they manufactured millions of tons of fertilizer at the chemical plant adjacent to Wilson Dam, which had been designed in 1918 to produce nitrates for muni­ tions. Eventually they led the world in the arcane field of fertilizer technology. All the while they brought progressive farming tech­ niques to the people of the valley. Federal appropriations got the big construction projects going, but TVA soon became more or less self-sustaining, as its legislation re­ quired. The new dams produced electric power, which TVA sold at very cheap rates. Through the years, people bought more and more of it. Supply seemed to create its own demand. The cost curve of electric power bent downward without interruption for thirty-five years. Ever-cheaper power became a secular religion which, together with the doctrine of multiple-use development of water resources, fused the TVA organization into a coherent whole. Since electricity supply is a natural monopoly, TVA as the most efficient producer managed to drive private competitors out of busi­ ness. In 1939 it bought out Wendell Willkie’s Tennessee Electric Power Company and parts of other firms. It promoted its own net­ work of affiliated municipal and cooperative power...

Land Conservation Through Public/Private Partnerships

The International Trade In Toxic Waste: A Selected Bibliography Of Sources Deanna L. Lewis and Ron Chepesiuk Dacus Library, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 29733, USA. TEL: 803-323-2131. Call it a toxic memorial, a monument to loose laws and fast money. This monument, tons of municipal incinerator ash from Philadelphia, lies on a rural Haitian beach where it was dumped one night in 1986 by a barge called the Khian Sea. The ship had entered the port with a permit to unload fertilizer. Fertilizer? Hardly! This cargo contained some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet--dioxins and furan and laced with heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. As workers began heaping the ash only yards from the incoming waves, one crewman even stuffed his mouth with a handful of the flaky black cargo to prove its harmless nature. Nearly one fourth of the 13,000 plus tons of waste had been unloaded from the barge before the Haitian government intervened and ordered the ash reloaded onto the barge. But the Khian Sea disappeared under the cover of darkness, leaving approximately 3,000 tons of toxic ash on Haiti's beach. The Khian Sea returned to Philadelphia with the remainder of its deadly cargo. The ship spent the next two years vainly seeking a dumping ground; it crossed the Atlantic, sailed around the coast of West Africa, through the Mediterranean, down the Suez Canal and into the Indian Ocean. When it finally pulled into the Singapore harbor it had a new name (the Pelicano), a new owner, and an empty hull. No one is willing to take responsibility for this scandal. The city of Philadelphia blames the middleman who blames the barge owner. The owner claims the ash was still on board when the barge was sold. The tangled case went to court; finally in 1993, two executives of Coastal Carriers, operators of the Khian Sea, received modest fines and prison sentences for dumping in the ocean without a permit. The legal battle is not over yet. But how much longer will the ash sit on the beach, and who will remove it? While the Khian Sea incident is one of the most notorious episodes of the international toxic waste trade, it is by no means an isolated incident. In Koko, Nigeria, 3,800 tons of highly poisonous waste, including potentially lethal polychlorinated byphenyls (PCBs), were found in drums at an open site; they were dumped by a local businessman who forged his cargo papers and bribed Koko port officials. An American chemical company sold 3,000 tons of fertilizer to the Bangladesh government, but 1,000 tons of ash from copper smelting furnaces was mixed into the fertilizer before it was shipped. U.S. officials verified that this altered fertilizer contained dangerous levels of lead and cadmium. In another case, several hundred mysterious barrels washed up onto the Turkish shore. When curious locals opened some of the barrels, they suffered from nausea and skin rashes. A few barrels even exploded. In fact, countless barrels of trouble have rolled down the economic slope to a number of poor, less developed countries: black South Africa, the former East Germany, China, Romania, Poland, Thailand, the Ukraine, and others. The lure of foreign currency available in the international waste trade can be awfully tempting to cash-poor developing countries. In Papua New Guinea, for example, the government of the province of Oro negotiated a deal with a California firm to build a $38 million detoxification plant to process 600,000 metric tons of toxic waste a month. The deal, had it gone through, would have generated an income approximately six times the annual provincial budget.

Scope for more efficient use of fertilizer nitrogen

Abstract. About 1.6 million tonnes of fertilizer N are applied to UK crops each year. In net terms, 10–60% of this is not taken up by the crop to which it was applied. Fertilizer N commonly doubles crop yield, but in the short term at least more than 90% of current production would be possible with only half normal use of N. However, costs of crop production other than fertilizer N are a large proportion of gross returns, so profits are sensitive to adjustments in N use and controls on N use could affect land values. Survey data show that compliance with current recommendations is good; recent improvements have come through restricting the use of N applications in autumn. Further improvements are possible by adjusting N use more fully for the extent to which past N applications have exceeded crop removal, and by better targeting the N used to improve protein concentrations of wheat grain. Research now in progress may provide insights into minimizing the crop N necessary for yield formation and the crop N left in the field at harvest, specifying the growing conditions which result in efficient N uptake from soil.

Fertilizer Chemicals Face Another Bleak Year

Forecasts for lower demand dominate the fertilizer outlook in the U.S. as the spring planting season begins in the South. A decline in total consumption of 5 to 8% in the fertilizer year ending June 30 will send it to below 42 million tons, or to about the 1983 level when the Payment in Kind (PIK) program was used to reduce crop surpluses. About 44.5 million tons of fertilizer were used in the 1986 fertilizer year, down 9% from 1985. Programs to reduce planted acreage will speed this year's decline in U.S. fertilizer use, and thus of the major fertilizer materials—ammonia, urea, wet-process phosphoric acid, and potash. Fertilizer production, although also down, will be larger than consumption, because of a net export of material over imports. The trade balance has been slipping for some years as imports of fertilizer materials containing nitrogen increased rapidly while exports were slowing. Ammonium nitrate and urea have lost many ...

A discussion of uranium control in phosphogypsum

Wet-process phosphoric acid plants produce about 4.5 tons of gypsum for each ton of fertilizer (P 2O 5 equivalent). About 33 million tons of gypsum are produced at phosphoric acid plants in the United States each year, and about 330 million tons are contained in existing stockpiles. Although most of the uranium initially present in phosphate rock is dissolved when the rock is acidulated to produce phosphoric acid, a fraction of it remains undissolved and the gypsum contains 0.03 to 0.08 lb of uranium per ton. Uranium concentrations in filter cakes produced by the hemihydrate process are significantly higher (as much as 0.2 lb/ton). This material hydrates to gypsum in the wastepile and most of the uranium becomes readily soluble in the process; the concentration of insoluble uranium in the hydrated cake is about the same as that in filter cake produced by the dihydrate process. Even at these low concentrations, the gypsum produced at phosphoric acid plants each year contains 1 to 2 million lb of uranium, and the stockpiled gypsum may contain a total of 10 to 20 million lb. Economical recovery of uranium from gypsum appears very unlikely in the foreseeable future. The losses to the filter cake, however, can possibly be reduced by operating the phosphoric acid plant under conditions that maximize uranium dissolution during rock acidulation. Studies of this problem showed that the major variable affecting the distribution of uranium between phosphoric acid and gypsum during phosphoric acid manufacture was the redox potential of the slurry during acidulation. Other variables affecting the uranium distribution included rock size, digestion temperature, and concentrations of excess sulfuric acid and fluoride.

Improving Nitrogen Fixation

Improving Nitrogen Fixation

Negotiation Strategies in International Business-Government Relations: A Study in India

Late in 1963, Bechtel Corporation Began Exploring with the Government of India a Crash Program to Produce one Million tons of fertilizer in India by Constructing five standardized plants of 200,000 tons each annual capacity.111 The case summary is based on my article “A Consortium that Never Was,” Columbia Journal of World Business, September-October, 1969, pp. 63-65. In August 1964, a committee of senior officials from the ministries of finance, Petroleum and Chemicals, and food and Agriculture authorized Bechtel to submit by late December 1964 a detailed feasibility study on the production and distribution of approximately one million tons per annum of nitrogen in urea and complex fertilizers. The Schedule for project Development was: submission of a Specific Proposal by early January 1965 Approval in principle by March 1965, final approval of specific terms of investment by July 1, 1965.© 1970 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1970) 1, 21–42

The Influence of Certain Fertilizing Materials on the Soil Reaction and Nutrient Level in the Potato Row during the Growing Season

AbstractThis is a continuation of an experiment conducted at the Virginia Truck Experiment Station in 19483 to determine the influence of acid and neutral fertilizers on the soil reaction in the potato row during the growing season. Results from the 1948 study indicate that fertilizers applied in bands in the potato row had a marked influence on lowering the soil reaction, and that the degree of this influence was dependent upon where the sample was taken with respect to the fertilizer bands. The purpose of this study was to determine whether fertilizer materials might differ in their influence on the soil reaction, with some possibly being more effective than others in reducing the pH of soils where there was danger of scab.A commercial 5‐10‐5 fertilizer was used for treatment 1, and hand mixed materials were used for the other five treatments. In treatment 2, all the nitrogen was derived from NH4NO3, while in treatment 3, it was derived from (NH4)2SO4. In treatments 4 and 5 the nitrogen was derived from NH4NO3, and 50 and 100 pounds of sulfur, respectively, were added per ton of fertilizer. All of the treatments were applied at the rate of 2,000 pounds per acre except treatment 6 where the fertilizer mixture was applied at the rate of 3,000 pounds per acre.Soil samples were taken 2, 4, 8, and 12 weeks after planting at certain locations around the band. Phosphorus, potassium, pH, nitrate and conductivity tests were run on all samples.The six fertilizer mixtures markedly lowered the soil reaction in the potato row during the 1949 and 1950 growing seasons. This influence varied with the sampling location or position of the soil sample with respect to the fertilizer bands, with the greatest influence being exerted above the bands. The lowering of the pH was associated with increases in salt concentration in nitrates and in potassium. There was no important differences in the influence of the six different mixtures on the soil acidity except where the soil samples were taken from the fertilizer bands.

Marine Fish Cultivation

IN their recent review in Nature1 of the papers on an experiment in marine fish cultivation by my colleagues and me2, Cooper and Steven express the view, encouragement of fish growth in arms of the open, sea such as the North Sea or the English Channel by the addition of plant nutrients can never be a paying concern. This categorical statement, based on a previous paper by Cooper3, seems to bar once and for all any large-scale application of fertilizers to suitable parts of the sea. Leaving a fuller discussion to a forthcoming paper on fertilizer application in an open sea-loch, may I point out here that Cooper‘s arguments and figures do not, in my opinion, bear out his conclusion. For an assessment of the economics of fertilizing the sea we require figures showing : (a) the return in crop and stock per ton of fertilizer added to land, (b) the return in fish and shell-fish per ton of fertilizer added to the sea. The latter figures unfortunately do not exist. If our experiments have shown anything, it is the desirability of keeping an open mind to a rational approach to the whole problem of increasing the amount of human food growing in the sea, and pursuing research step by step along various lines, not excluding the fertilizing of suitable larger areas. As regards the threatening scarcity of phosphate, should it become necessary to recover it from the sea it may prove possible to extract it from water taken from greater depths of unproductive areas where the concentration of phosphate is high and its availability to plants low.

THE INFLUENCE OF NUTRITION ON FUSARIUM BASAL ROT OF NARCISSUS AND ON FUSARIUM YELLOWS OF GLADIOLUS

THE MOST serious disease of narcissus on the East Coast of the United States is a basal rot of the bulbs caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. narcissi (Cke. et Mass.) Snyder and Hansen. Some rot may be evident at the time of digging but the majority of the bulbs appear to be sound even though many are infected. After 6 to 8 weeks in storage many of the infected bulbs become rotted, particularly if high temperature and moisture conditions prevail and the bulbs cure slowly after digging. The closely related species Fusarium oxysporum f. gladioli (Massey) Snyder and Hansen, causes one of the most serious diseases of gladiolus, yellows, or corm rot, which in recent years has been responsible for annual losses of as much as 60 per cent in the extensive Florida plantings. As a result of commercial advertising, bulb growers have recently become interested in the possibility of using growth-regulating substances to flower and bulb production and to control disease. Some manufacturers of synthetic hormones and purine compounds have recently advocated the use of their products on bulbs to increase and accelerate root production. An advertisement by one of these companies alsoadds that their material controls serious bulb and tuber rots. This material contains allantoin, one of the purines. Another material4 consisted largely of sucrose, uric acid, and naphthalene acetamide at the time our tests were made. A third material is a rather widely used proprietary fertilizer containing 60 to 800 mg. of a synthetic hormone, indolebutyric acid or naphthaleneacetic acid, per ton of fertilizer, in addition to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and a number of minor elements. Our investigations of fertilizer requirements of narcissus and gladiolus have shown that fertilizers, synthetic growth regulators, and the nitrogen bases markedly affect the severity of the Fusarium diseases of these crops. In narcissus, basal rot is increased greatly when certain of the synthetic growth regulators and nitrogen bases are used in dips and in powders on the bulbs. It was also found that these materials stimulate the growth of Fusarium oxysporum f. narcissi in culture and a short note was published to this effect (Stuart and McClellan, 1943). A more complete account of the investigations is reported in this paper. FIELD RESULTS WITH GROWTH REGULATORS AND NITROGEN BASES.-On September 21, 1940, King Alfred narcissus bulbs 12 to 14 cm. in circumference

Fertilizers in 1945-1946

THE year 1945 saw the largest consumption of fertilizers in the history of this country. Not only were more tons of fertilizers used, but the average plant food content of each ton was the highest on record. Final data are not yet available but such preliminary figures as have been assembled indicate a consumption of over 12,500,000 tons with a possibility of close to 13,000,000 tons. This is 70% more than the average of 7,350,000 tons consumed in the 5 prewar years 1935-39 and marks the seventh year of steadily increased use. The average total plant food content of mixed fertilizer in the 5 prewar years was 18.87%. In 1945 the average plant food content was 21%, so that each ton of mixed fertilizer used last year contained on the average 11.3% more plant food than the fertilizer used in the 5 prewar years. The plant food content of fertilizer materials applied directly to the ...

A Resource of Millions of Tons of Fertilizer

A Resource of Millions of Tons of Fertilizer