THE FIGHT FOR SOIL FERTILITY
McMillin, Miles
The Cooperative Movement: The Fight For Soil Fertility By MILES McMILLIN LAST February The Progressive carried a series of articles on a fight that is looming up in this country which will have a...
...No More River Authorities The new organization, it is apparent, will work both sides of the street and the middle as well...
...John Bankhead, both Alabama Democrats, and Rep...
...The first strategic move, of course, is to change the name of the old National Fertilizer Association, Some of the luminaries in that organization did a messy job of public relations by getting themselves in bad with the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice...
...The Government program has the backing of the large farm cooperatives who hope, with Government help, to make deeper penetrations into the manufacture and distribution of fertilizer...
...Citing Government reports, the articles showed that what the fertilizer trust is prepared to sell is the same old diluted fertilizer, containing more non-nutrient items than plant food...
...So, like the power trust which changed its front organization name after the Insull era, a new association has been formed which will be known as the American Plant Food Council...
...This program is based on the actual needs of the soil and the fertilizer is manufactured and distributed accordingly...
...Lister Hill, and Sen...
...Sold at monopoly-controlled prices and loaded with waste materials which often cause heavy damage to farm crops, this fertilizer and the outmoded methods of marketing it bring fantastic profits to the manufacturers and middlemen...
...A broad national fertilizer program has been introduced into Congress by Sen...
...The fertilizer trust, naturally, is deploying to meet this threat to their profits...
...They don't want any more examples like TVA lying around proving that plant foods can be put back in the soil at a price farmers can afford to pay...
...Doubtless it has its eyes on the Missouri Valley Authority and the Columbia River Authority proposals...
...The program, as was pointed out, has accomplished phenomenal results in restoring soil fertility...
...It will oppose Government interference in the fertilizer industry and will probably work to prevent the importation of cheap fertilizers for the American farmer...
...Perhaps the most noteworthy is the fact that several members of Congress have stepped into it and have taken the offensive against the fertilizer trust...
...John Flannagan, Virginia Democrat...
...Others are under anti-trust indictments...
...Our purpose was to point up the alternatives facing the American people on how best to restore to the soils, through modern synthetic fertilizer, the life-giving nutrients with which nature originally endowed them...
...2. The approach of the fertilizer trust which, according to a report of the Association of Land Grant Colleges, measures "need in terms of what the fertilizer industry is prepared to sell...
...The National Fertilizer Association lined up its powerful lobby against a Government program to break monopoly's grip on the industry...
...It will make a direct appeal for cooperatives to join up, but it will fight to keep the fertilizer industry in the hands of private enterprise...
...The New Federal Program The fight over this issue has been developing for several years...
...The Cooperative Movement: The Fight For Soil Fertility By MILES McMILLIN LAST February The Progressive carried a series of articles on a fight that is looming up in this country which will have a tremendous bearing on one of the most vital conservation questions of our day—the fertility of our soil...
...Most of all they are afraid that it might be the same idea that was conceived at TVA—the combination of these 2 great resources to make cheap high-grade fertilizer...
...The alternatives were these: 1. The approach being used by the Tennessee Valley Authority in its nationwide test demonstration program...
...Since last January there have been some recent developments in this fight...
...The program also calls for aiding the cooperatives to build as many more plants "as may be deemed advisable" to round the program out...
...The National Union Farmer, publication of the Farmers Union, recently charged that the APFC was joining up with the power trust in an effort to fight off any more regional river authorities...
...It is significant that'90 per cent of the nation's phosphate deposits lie within the area that would be developed by these 2 river projects...
...It provides for at least 3 fertilizer plants to be built by the Federal Government for the purpose of developing Government-owned lands in which there are rich fertilizer deposits...
...They are afraid that the proximity of the big hydro-electric cites to the fertilizer deposits might give someone an idea...
...One was found with some suspicious tie-ups with I. G. Farben...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 31
