Bacteria & War

More TNT or more food--more TNT or more nitrogenous fertilizers to make U.S. crops bumper? The answer to this tough wartime question seemed to be more TNT: Department of Agriculture scientists last week foresaw a 53% cut in nitrogenous fertilizers. Behind this possibility was the increased demand for nitrogen, source of both explosives and fertilizers. Though chemical plants now building will soon triple U.S. capacity to produce nitrogen from the air, TNT production is fast approaching 6,000 tons a day. But chemists and farmers have a partial substitute for fertilizer--nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

These useful germs, the only controllable source of agricultural nitrogen besides chemicals, are found in most good farm soils. They live in nodules on the roots of leguminous plants (peas, beans, alfalfa, clover), contribute twice as much nitrogen (33% of the return) to the soil as manures and chemical fertilizers together. But their natural activity can be artificially increased if more bacteria are mixed with legume seed and planted with it. This process is called soil inoculation. Farmers buy the inoculating bacteria in cans of moist humus or bottles of sugary jelly. Enough bacteria for an acre cost from 25-c- to 40-c-, will fix from 100 to 200 lb. of nitrogen. This is equivalent to:

1) 625 to 1,250 lb. of sodium nitrate;

2) 500 to 1,000 lb. of ammonium sulfate,

The Department of Agriculture has already-warned farmers to meet the nitrate shortage by inoculating their legumes. Where legume plantings (which have increased 200 to 300% this year) are substituted, the department bluntly insists on inoculation.

Result: the biggest jump in the history of the bacteria industry. From seed stores and mail-order houses, farmers are buying 25% to 50% more bacteria than last year, when they bought the estimated $1,000,000 output of a score of commercial laboratories.

Some bacteria breeders last week feared that they might not be able to meet the rising demand. One reason: shortage of sauerkraut juice. This inspires bacteria to heroic feats of reproduction, so that they now multiply as much in one day as they formerly multiplied in a fortnight. But WPB, which has taken nitrogen from the farmers, allows sauerkraut makers no cans to ship their juices in.

Postponed until the end of the war is development of the newest and most novel method of fertilizing with nitrogen: use of gaseous ammonia (NH3) -- a discovery of Shell Chemical Co. The gas is allowed to escape from steel cylinders into irrigation waters, where it dissolves and is carried into every part of California or chards, rice fields, truck farms. These un usual amounts of quickly available nitrogen cause the plants to grow with startling speed. Ever since Shell's cautious introduction of this gaseous fertilizer, growers' demand for it has far exceeded the supply. But now Shell's ammonia must be shipped to munitions plants.

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