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Show Farmers Fail to Use Fertilizer Survey Shows, Miss Good Buy Chemical fertilizers remain one of the farmer's vei-y best buys. Yet only about seven per cent of Western farm-era us; fertilizer fertil-izer at the most profitable rate. And uncomfortably large number num-ber -about 55 per cent use no fertilizer at all. These surprise facts were revealed re-vealed recently by Dr. Richard Bahme of the National Plant Food Institute. He spoke at the seventh annual fertilizer conference confer-ence on the Colorado State University Uni-versity campus at Fort Collins. By not using fertilizers, farmers far-mers are failing to take advantage ad-vantage of this method of reducing reduc-ing unit costs and therefore increasing in-creasing their income, Dr. Bahme stated. Reasons why farmers fail to use fertilizers at higher, more profitable rates were brought out in a survey which th:- institute made in 10 western states, including includ-ing Colorado. These reasons, which often can be branded as misconceptions, are as follows: 1. They feel that fertilizers simply are not necessary, even though repeated experiments show that fertilizers can boost average crop production by 50 per cent or more. 2. Lack of money.. However, Dr. Bahme added, an increasing number of bankers are announcing announ-cing their willingness even eagerness eag-erness to finance fertilizer applications. ap-plications. 3. Farmers apparently believe that unfavorable weather is likely like-ly to have a much greater effect on results from fertilizer use. However, research indicates that fertilizer frequently can be used to help overcome unfavorable moisture conditions and to increase in-crease the efficiency of water use. i 4. A few farmers still believe that organic fertilizers (animal and green manures) are the best source of plant foods. But Dr. Bahme noted that it is exibremely difficult to apply enough organic fertilizer to obtain enough of the essential plant food elements. And in the final 'analysis, these organic or-ganic forms must decompose into inorganic nutrients in order to become available for crop use. The study showed, Dr. Bahme concluded, that more vigorous educational ed-ucational effort was needed to overcome these barriers to fertilizer fer-tilizer use. He urged fertilizer dealers, Land Grant college scientists, sci-entists, county agents and agricultural agri-cultural officials to work together togeth-er on an expanded educational program. |