20th+: October 2018

In the 1930s, before the mechanisation of farming, plough teams were a familiar sight in rural Britain.

The inter-war years were difficult times for farmers and farm workers. When the wartime controls (of the Great War) were summarily removed after 1921, workers continued to consider themselves betrayed by the government.

The Agriculture Act, depression and subsidy .

Halcyon days

WW1 governments had put in place a state regulated and subsidised system of agriculture that increased the pay of farm workers, the profits of farmers and the productivity of the land. The system continued after the war. Many tenant farmers took the opportunity of the early post-war boom to buy their farms from their landlords. The increase in Schedule tax on income from land was at a historically high level, which encouraged landowners to convert a highly taxed income into zero-tax capital gain. Nearly a quarter of agricultural land was sold by the end of 1922.

An oat shortage in 1920 meant that the high prices farmers could charge not only provided them with considerable profits, but also produced a bill of up to £15 million for the government as it subsidised the sale of oats to the public and food producers.

Repeal of the Agriculture Act

This system stayed in place until 1921, when the Agriculture Act - guaranteeing minimum wages and minimum produce prices - was repealed. The government was facing a potential £20 million subsidy bill for the agricultural sector, when other parts of the economy did not have such protection, and high food prices were not popular with a predominantly urban electorate.

The result was a rapid reduction in agricultural wages by as much as 40 per cent in one year, and the increased indebtedness of arable farmers. The removal of restrictions on Canadian grain was combined with reluctance by the government to intervene in the agricultural sector. These additional blows resulted in further falls in productivity, increased rural poverty, emigration to towns and some land lying waste, even in fertile areas such as Norfolk. Agriculture did not fully recover until WW2.

Consolidation and the return of subsidy

Minor recoveries in grain prices in the mid-1920s improved matters, but were cancelled out by the depression from 1931 onwards. Dairy farming did not suffer as badly, and some agricultural sub-sectors, such as eggs and cheese, moved to more efficient 'industrial' methods, particularly in Lancashire and Wiltshire.

The creation of marketing boards for various agricultural sub-sectors (such as milk and potatoes) in the mid 1930s helped to improve coordination, moderate prices, direct production and control imports. Also, the early 1930s saw tariffs reintroduced for a number of products such as wheat, soft fruit and potatoes, and farmers were quick to take advantage. By the late 1930s, the situation in the agricultural sector had improved from the difficulties of the early 1920s and early 1930s.

Documents:

Halcyon days .

Cabinet Conclusion 2. Agriculture Policy. 20 October 1919

Cabinet Conclusion 3. Guaranteed Minimum Price. 20 October 1919

Cabinet Conclusion 7. Credit Facilities for Agriculture. 20 October 1919

Cabinet Conclusion 9. Compulsory Powers over Cultivation of Land. 20 October 1919

Certain General Advantages of the Agricultural Policy. 20 October 1919

Cabinet Conclusion 1. Agriculture.18 May 1920

Cabinet Memorandum. Agriculture Bill. 10 August 1920

Cabinet Conclusion 2. Agriculture Bill. 16 December 1920

Repeal of the Agriculture Act .

Cabinet Conclusion 2. Agricultural Policy. 14 November 1923

Cabinet Memorandum. Agricultural Policy. 12 November 1923

Consolidation and the return of subsidy .

Cabinet Conclusion 11. Agricultural Policy. 29 March 1933

Cabinet Conclusion 9. Agricultural Policy. 6 May 1931

Cabinet Conclusion 3. Agricultural Policy. 4 June 1931

Cabinet Memorandum. Committee on Agricultural Policy. 7 March 1930

Cabinet Memorandum. Committee on Agricultural Policy. 17 March 1930

Cabinet Memorandum. Home Wheat Quota Scheme. Date 13 April 1931

Agriculture

Harvest 1938 > .
2018 British Farming > .

1943 - Holiday Ideas (Scotland) - Harvest Help Mid-8 to Mid-10 > .
British Farming - Christmas > .

British Farming >>> .

Farming & Food - tb >> .

Agricultural College > .

Wartime Farm in BBC Farm - tb >> .

BBC Farms - Tudor through Wartime - tb >> .
Tractors Working On The Farm: Power On The Land - 1943 > .

Wartime herbs for pharmaceutical industry > .

WAEC - War Agricultural Executive Committees ..

During World War I and the post-war reconstruction, the agriculture and food ministries controlled their respective industries. This culminated in the Agriculture Act (1920) which provided support for farmers in the form of guaranteed prices for agricultural products and minimum wages for farm labourers. But within six months of its implementation, falling prices and a struggling economy forced the repeal of the act, which returned the country to the laissez-faire economy that had existed before 1914, when there was a free market economy with little or no government involvement.

At this time, Labour and the Conservatives were united in their anti-subsidy approach, strongly believing agricultural issues should be solved in the open market.

These sentiments – which eventually led to a free market period lasting from 1921-1931 – are reflected in the policies of today. The 1920s Labour Party opposed state support to farmers while land was privately owned – today, Labour wants to move subsidies away from wealthy landowners.

In the 1930s the Conservatives stated: “It is no longer national policy to buy all over the world in the cheapest markets”. Their ambition today is to: “make a resounding success of our world-leading food and farming industry; producing more, selling more, and exporting more of our great British food”.

However, there were some significant downsides when the Agriculture Act was repealed: agricultural wages fell by as much as 40%. Productivity fell too, rural poverty increased, small farms failed and land was abandoned through urban migration. Some described the countryside as a desolate waste.

[And, by WWII and the Nazi blockade of Atlantic shipping, Britain was importing ~60% of its food ---- with predictable consequences for agriculture.]

https://theconversation.com/brexits-impact-on-farming-policy-will-take-britain-back-to-the-1920s-but-thats-not-necessarily-a-bad-thing-80028
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/agriculture-act-depression-subsidy.htm

Wartime Farm - Documentary Series - History - British Collection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsU5s0ofYo
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj2leWh0oQffAt5ICQxQeZ2DSudUpSdCJ

Saturday, October 27, 2018

British Agriculture WW2

24-9-1 Wartime Survey of all British Land - Farming Explained > .

24-9-8 [Ray Walden] Victims of Modern Agriculture - FarmEx > .

24-8-25 British War Agriculture - Farming Explained > .

24-8-24 "Make Fruitful the Land" film about farming (1945) - FarmEx > .

24-9-15 WLA, PoWs - Townies who rebuilt the countryside - Farming Explained > .
Agricultural Revolution to WW2 - Γαῖα >> .

Farming & Food - tb >> .

History of Farming - Farming Explained >> .

How Farming Works - Farming Explained >> .

Rural Culture - Farming Explained >> .

Science of the Countryside - Farming Explained >> .

...

British Council film collection - British Council >> .

British Council BC

Episode 30 - The War-Ags. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Agriculture Minister Reginald Dorman-Smith formed the County War Agricultural Executive Committees across England to oversee a plough-up campaign that would have to undo the 70 years of decline in Britain was to avoid being starved into submission. The War-Ags supported farmers with subsidies, machinery and scientific advice, but also enforced modern agricultural methods. Ploughing was non-negotiable, and those unwilling or incapable of rising to the task were evicted or dispossessed from their farms. George Stapledon's methods were imposed by the government, as Lord Lymington lamented the decline in the aristocracy's postion.

---

Episode 31 - The 1941 National Farm Survey (pdf). To increase production the War Agricultural Executive Committees undertook a systematic survey of every land holding over 5 acres in England and Wales. With corresponding maps, the National Farm Survey provided the most comprehensive rendition of British land since the Domesday Book.

Scientists CS Orwin, Daniel Hall and George Stapledon (>) had been pushing for a comprehensive survey to plan agricultural reforms - proposals for land nationalisation, national parks and greenbelts were all informed by the information gathered by the War-Ags.

______

Early ecofascism: The English Mistery ("Mistery" being an old word for a guild) was a political and esoteric group active in the United Kingdom of the 1930s. A "Conservative fringe group" in favour of bringing back the feudal system, its views have been characterised as "reactionary ultra-royalist, anti-democratic". The organisation was opposed to social welfare, the London School of Economics, and the United States.

The London barrister, William John Sanderson (1883–1941) was the son of W. J. Sanderson of Gosforth, educated at Marlborough College, and graduating LL.B. at Jesus College, Cambridge; he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1906. He was before World War I at the centre of a group of "Royalist and Loyalist" young men. Some of those were associated with the chambers of F. E. Smith; and very many of them died in the war in France. In 1917 he founded the Order of the Red Rose, an anti-Semitic group opposed to finance capitalism, with the zoologist George Percival Mudge, and the academic Arthur Gray.

Sanderson had notions that if the mystical "lost secrets" of the English could be discovered, then the sort of society he envisioned could be created or as he saw it recreated. The "lost secrets" of the English that Sanderson sought were the "Secret of Memory" as opposed to the "paraphernalia of learning"; the "Secret of Race" as only Englishmen with good genes would have sex with Englishwomen of equally good genes; the "Secret of Government"; the "Secret of Power" which had been destroyed by "industrial ideals"; the "Secret of Organisation"; the "Secret of Property" (i.e. feudalism as a social system); and the "Secret of Economics" which had lost due to "moneyed interests".

In his pamphlet An Introduction to the English Mistery, Sanderson wrote that there were two types of "aliens", namely "the Dutch, Danes and other peoples of north-west Europe" vs. "some races on the other hand differ very widely from us both in character and tradition". Sanderson was described by all who knew him as a deeply unpleasant man with repulsive views such as his statement that people who became seriously ill did not deserve sympathy and that God only cared about the lives of rich people. The fact that Sanderson was a very small man whose own illness left him confided to a wheelchair did not stop him from preaching the doctrine that only the lives of healthy, attractive, and well off people mattered as he had no compassion for the poor and/or the sick.

...
Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, KCB FRS, sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall (22 June 1864 - 5 July 1942) was a British agricultural educator and researcher who founded Wye College. The founding staff included Herbert Henry Cousins, chemist, John Percival, botanist, Frank Braybrooke Smith, agriculturist, and F.V. Theobald, entomologist. Hall handled the teaching of chemistry. The college was formally opened in 1894 and had fourteen students. In 1902 Hall was persuaded to leave Wye and help rejuvenate research at the Rothamsted Laboratory. In 1912 he left Rothamsted to work with the Development Commission. In 1919 he became a director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution and was also a part-time advisor for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1909 and made KCB in 1918.

Black Market, WW2 ..

British Agriculture WW2 ..

British Economy - Interbellum ..

British Government Changes WW2 ..

Coping on Rationing ..

MAF - Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ..

MoF - Ministry of Food ..

NFS - National Farm Survey ..

Spring Offensive ..

WAEC - War Agricultural Executive Committees ..

WarAg - Farming in Britain During WW2 ..

Wartime Farm ..

When the County Executive Committees under the Food Production Department were abolished in 1919 they were replaced by the agricultural committees of the county councils. The Minister of Food could nominate up to one third of the membership of these committees. They had no powers of direction, but exercised all the limited agricultural powers of the county councils. They were abolished by the Agriculture Act 1947.

[WW2] During the war, contact between the ministry and the county committees was maintained through liaison officers, prominent local figures who represented groups of counties to the ministry. These appointments ended in 1945. Under regulation 49 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939 the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries was vested with powers for the purpose of materially increasing home food production in England and Wales. Certain of these powers were delegated by the Cultivation of Lands Order 1939 (SR & O 1939, no. 1078) and subsequent orders to the County War Agricultural Executive Committees which were appointed by the minister under regulation 66 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939. These powers were drawn in very wide and general terms which enabled the committees to take all necessary measures to ensure that the land in their area of responsibility was cultivated to the best advantage.

Under these powers the committees appointed many sub-committees, each of which was entrusted with a definite sphere of responsibility. This relieved the executive committees of the detailed work of carrying the programme into effect. Thus they were left free to consider overall policy matters while carrying out general supervision of the various sub-committees. The Cultivation of Lands Order did provide that proposals to take possession or to terminate the tenancy of any land other than by agreement required the minister's prior approval in writing.

In order that the work under the regulations and the minister's order could be carried out in the most efficient manner the counties were divided into convenient districts and district committees were established, without executive powers, to serve as the eyes and ears of the executive and sub-committees in regard to all matters of food production.

After the war, part V of the Agriculture Act 1947 provided for the establishment of County Agricultural Executive Committees for each administrative county, establishing the committees on a permanent basis, to concern themselves with the promotion of agricultural development and efficiency. As with the War Agricultural Executive Committees, the County Agricultural Executive Committees set up sub-committees to deal with different aspects of the work. District committees were also formed to give leadership in their areas on the general development of agriculture and horticulture. The act allowed the minister to delegate any of his functions relating to agriculture to the committees, and from 1947 the committees' staff became civil servants employed directly by the ministry. County Agricultural Executive Committees were abolished in 1971.

British Farming - Postwar

2018 British Farming > .
British Farming - Christmas > .

British Farming >>> .

Farming & Food - tb >> .

Friday, October 26, 2018

Cloches, Row Covers, Greenhouses

How to use cloches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiWoPG5i7cY

Hoop House: How to Make a Row Cover Tunnel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc70X2Jn1gk

Crewe Tractor

Insight into the work involved in the recreation of a Crewe Tractor – based on some 130 vehicles adapted by the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) at Crewe Works in the 1916-1917 period.

It is said that the inspiration for the idea came from the daughter of the LNWR’s Chief Mechanical Engineer, CJ Bowen-Cooke, who had become aware of a lack of powered transport on the lightly laid trench tramways operated behind the trenches across France and Belgium. The design saw the adaptation of a standard Ford Model T (manufactured in Trafford Park) complete with a lightweight utility body and kit-form railway chassis. So it was that they could, within one hour, be adapted from road trim to a two-foot gauge locomotive with load space. Initial trials appear to have used the brass-radiator Model Ts then being manufactured, though the actual production run would seem to have entirely utilised the pressed radiator type of the Model T variant. They did not form part of the War Department Light Railway (WDLR) fleet, rather being part of the motor transport pool – and were marked and numbered as such.

The design would seem to have been of indifferent success, and it is recorded that all remained in railway guise once so converted, possibly due to convenience but also perhaps due to the poor state of the roads at that time.

The first vehicle through our workshops was a US imported Model T with left-hand drive and built in 1922. It had been brought to the UK at some point in the past and fitted with an English-style van body. At Beamish it worked as a general delivery vehicle until withdrawn for overhaul and conversion to the Crewe Tractor. The conversion work was carried out in the museum’s Regional Heritage Engineering Centre and was largely the work of volunteer John Hodder, with assistance from Mike Davidson. The work was completed at Christmas 2016 and the Crewe Tractor can now be seen in use around the Museum. The loadbed includes a toolbox as well as a storage container of suitable period style, in which I can pack the laptop and other work regalia – a First World War padlock completes the picture!

You can follow the story of the Model Ts, and other vehicles at Beamish, on the Transport Blog at www.beamishtransportonline.co.uk.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Designs for Garden Space Optimization

Succession planting

Succession planting

"Crop On with Charles Dowding, autumn harvests from summer plantings"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxRCd_gJ23w

"Polyculture and Succession - Farming with other species"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rACzpXUv778

Vertical, wall, arbour

Vertical Gardening - Simple Ideas for a Vertical Vegetable Garden
Pole or climbing beans; climbing peas; sweet potatoes; vining tomatoes; sprawling types of zucchini, cucumber, melon, squash; arbors - passionfruit; grapevine; climbing squashes, climbing beans; sweatpeas; fruit trees (apples, pears, cherries, etc); cane fruits (raspberries, blackberries)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HLho4vcJac

Vertical Gardening (USA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdI2YrNIf5g
Space optimization
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/2jAytcoZFPk

Make the most of vertical spaces: RHS Greening Grey Britain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDhNCXWTUnI
RHS Greening Grey Britain
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXEVpDvKn91zZYTeUt1-prLXJh-B-WiVG

DfV - Dig for Victory

Making a Compost Heap > .

07:40 Fertilizer & Insecticides

Why Moderns Should Care About Victory Gardens - occ > .

Compost heap > .

50s House & Garden - Spark > .

>> Homefront WW2 >>>

Compost, soil, vermiculture - tb >> .
Dig for Victory, England WW2 - Γαῖα >> .

Farming & Food - tb >> .

Home Front - Elice >> .

The 1940s House - Elice >> .

The 40s House - IWM >> .

The Dig for Victory Show - ShoplandCollection >> .

The Growing Revolution (Dig for Victory) - LOVE IT >> .

Victory Garden - USA, WW3 - Γαῖα >> .

Wartime, Subsistence Cooking - Elice >> .

Wartime Farm - Absolute History >> .

Wartime Farm, Kitchen & Garden (full) - archanth >> .

Wartime Kitchen, Garden, Farm - Elice >> .

MAF - Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ..
MoF - Ministry of Food ..

Dig for Victory leaflets (image, large) .

Dig for Victory Monthly Guides .

Dig for Victory

In Britain, "digging for victory" used much land such as waste ground, railway edges, ornamental gardens and lawns, while sports fields and golf courses were requisitioned for farming or vegetable growing.

Sometimes a sports field was left as it was but used for sheep-grazing instead of being mown (for example see Lawrence Sheriff School § Effects of the Second World War).

By 1943, the number of allotments had roughly doubled to 1,400,000, including rural, urban and suburban plots.

C. H. Middleton's radio programme In Your Garden reached millions of listeners keen for advice on growing potatoes, leeks and the like, and helped ensure a communal sense of contributing to the war effort (as well as a practical response to food rationing).

County Herb Committees were established to collect medicinal herbs when German blockades created shortages, for instance in Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove) which was used to regulate heartbeat.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch.

During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to promote the movement, while allotments growing onions in the shadow of the Albert Memorial also pointed to everybody, high and low, chipping in to the national struggle.

Both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle had vegetable gardens planted at the instigation of King George VI to assist with food production.

Victory garden - Wikipedia

Dig for Victory > .
?search Dig for Victory? .

Why Moderns Should Care About Victory Gardens - occ > .

Pests, diseases, and ghastly chemical pesticides

Victory Garden 1989-1991
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOj8txIbnv0Ht-5jGBUyeSx1daFNbIJEK

Dig for Victory ~ Ben
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYZbCEPmWCtOBY7R0r44RMo1_fONlBBIL

Wartime Kitchen & Garden ~ Ben
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYZbCEPmWCtNMSEGq5HvXsduK5H1f17zm

https://www.youtube.com/user/AbsolutelyFavulous/playlists?view=1&shelf_id=0&sort=dd
Original Victory Garden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31hB5d__UT4

Dig for Victory - Ben Silver
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYZbCEPmWCtOBY7R0r44RMo1_fONlBBIL

.Why Moderns Should Care About Victory Gardens - occ > .

Victory gardens ww1 ww2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkPVInuJZII

Victory Garden >> .

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Electric Fence

Electric Fence

Image: LeJay "pendulum" style fence charger
http://www.pssurvival.com/PS/Electronic/Lejay_Manual_Electrical_5thed_1945_1988.pdf

Manual has electric fence controllers and windmill-generator-battery contraptions.

Ford Model T Trembler Coil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPTmSHjSu0A

LeJay Fence Charger Made From Model T Buzz Coil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBBHuJiSY6c

How To - High Voltage from Model T "Buzz Coil"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aeb125R5QE

New Zealand innovation – improved electrical components and materials

During the late 1930s, emerging public safety issues and concerns about the newly emerging electric fences were considered at length, and began to be controlled more by regulations. In the 1960s, a different New Zealand inventor named Dough Phillips patented a new type of design using capacitor discharge, thus extending the feasible deign length of the fence and at the same time reducing its cost. This was duly patented using plastic insulators for flexibility and durability (instead of the previous porcelain) and similar systems continue to be used in agricultural electric fences today. Early fence charging devices used alternating current (AC) with a transformer and a mechanically operated switch, giving long pulses and sometimes of unpredictable voltages. As might be expected, these mechanical switches frequently failed, so later systems made use of solid state (transistor) circuitry instead of manual switching components. For a period, some types of fence energisers gave longer outputs. Nicknamed ‘weed burners’, this variant became known for causing fires in hot, dry weather and it was for this reason that their popularity reduced.
.........
The early development of the modern, pulsed electric fence commenced in New Zealand in 1936 when William "Bill" Gallagher built a primitive energiser from a cars' ignition coil to keep his horse off his car. This was soon extended to a fence and progressed from there. These early fence charging devices used alternating current (AC) with a transformer and a mechanically operated switch, giving long pulses and sometimes delivered unpredictable voltages. As might be expected, these mechanical switches frequently failed and the development of using capacitors and solid state circuits by another New Zealander, Doughy Phillips, greatly improved the efficiency of the system. These were generally known as "weed burners" as they tended to burn weed growth but did cause fires on occasions.
-----------
Further modern developments: ropes and insulators

Over recent years, there have been some significant improvements including polyethylene insulators, which last longer and are cheaper, along with the electrical design of the energizing units which are also called a fencer or energiser. Modern fence chargers use low impedance circuitry, in which a capacitor is charged by a solid-state circuit. If an animal (or a person) comes into contact with the fence, the charge is released by a thyristor. This is an electronic component which can be thought of as an automatic switch so the voltage is more controlled, and the shock pulse is much shorter – typically just a few milliseconds. Fences can be powered by batteries and solar panels; if a fence is in good condition, such batteries can last many weeks depending on fence length. Woven rope-like material containing conducting wires has also been developed. Electric fences are used primarily to stop livestock from escaping or from wandering onto farmland and damaging crops. Although the majority of electric fences today are used for animal control in this way, other applications include prisons, military bases and other protected installations. Here, the aim is to maintain security, or to stop people crossing a borderline or other physical limit. The voltage delivered can be varied and may be selected to cause discomfort or in security applications, incapacitating or lethal. Finally, probably due to their intrinsic risks, there have also been legislative changes and regulations in some countries regarding the construction and use of electric fences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_fence
http://www.farmcareuk.com/blog/history-electric-fencing/
https://www.agrisellex.co.uk/blog/history-of-electric-fencing-1832-to-2016/831
https://www.smokstak.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95985 .

EU Agriculture

24-2-1 Farmers STORM the EU - Why? - EU Made SIMPLE > .

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Fertilizers

.Managing Sulfur For Your Crops - AgPhD > .

22-2-6 Decarbonising Ammonia production. Revolutionary new process - Just > .

.Fritz Haber - Nobel Laureate Who Killed Millions and Saved Billions - Veritasium > .

Growing plants need at least 16 nutrients to be healthy.

Primary nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, known by the chemical symbols of N, P and K.
Secondary nutrients are calcium, magnesium and sulfur.
Micronutrients include boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum and zinc.
Other nutrients that are easily available in the environment include carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. These last three do not need to be supplied by fertilizers.

Haber–Bosch process ..

Throughout the 19th century the demand for nitrates and ammonia for use as fertilizers and industrial feedstocks had been steadily increasing. The main source was mining niter deposits. At the beginning of the 20th century it was being predicted that these reserves could not satisfy future demands and research into new potential sources of ammonia became more important. The obvious source was atmospheric nitrogen (N2), comprising nearly 80% of the air, however N2 is exceptionally stable and will not readily react with other chemicals. Converting N2 into ammonia posed a challenge for chemists globally.

Ammonia was first manufactured using the Haber process on an industrial scale in 1913 in BASF's Oppau plant in Germany, reaching 20 tonnes per day the following year. During WW1, the production of munitions required large amounts of nitrate. The Allies had access to large sodium nitrate deposits in Chile (Chile saltpetre) controlled by British companies. Germany had no such resources, so the Haber process proved essential to the German war effort. Synthetic ammonia from the Haber process was used for the production of nitric acid, a precursor to the nitrates used in explosives.

Bones as Resource ..

During the war, nitrogen was one of the prime components of TNT and other high explosives. Post-war, munitions plants produced ammonia for fertilizer. Fertilizer use increased, partly due to enhanced supply and partly because farmers and agricultural scientists understood the importance of nutrients to crops.

Guano (bird droppings) became a popular fertilizer by 1800s. Trial and error experiments, first by farmers, later by scientists established the effectiveness of early fertilizers.

By the 1940s, plant scientists at universities and research facilities had determined the 16 essential ingredients for plant growth. The three primary nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—were needed in quantities approaching the millions of tons by 1940.

In the early part of the 20th Century, potassium was mined from potash deposits, the largest of which were in Germany. By 1940, new sources had been discovered in Canada, and there were chemical processes coming on line to supply potassium.

By 1940, phosphorus was also being produced by chemical processes and by mining phosphate rock. In the 1940s, the use of "normal superphosphate" fertilizers peaked. In later decades, it was replaced by triple superphosphate and ammonium phosphates.

Nitrogen production was boosted by WW2 developments. Nitrogen is, of course, one of the main ingredients in explosives.

During the 1940s, most of the ammonia was applied as solid ammonium nitrate pellets. But this form is highly explosive. In fact, ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil is a common explosive still used in mines. There were several disasters where the material exploded in ships or other transports.

By the mid 40s, researchers were exploring ways to apply anhydrous ammonia directly into the soil. It won't explode, but it has to be kept under pressure and usually refrigerated. It can "burn" skin by drying it severely, and it can crowd out oxygen in a closed area and even cause death by asphyxiation. But, anhydrous ammonia has the highest nutrient content of any fertilizer. It's 82.5 percent nitrogen.

https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_04.html .

Food - Importing vs Exporting Nations

Agricultural Futures - 21st C ..

Agricultural Geopolitics ..

Farming & Food - tb >> .

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Haber–Bosch process

How the Earth's Population Exploded > .

22-2-6 Decarbonising Ammonia production. Revolutionary new process - Just > .

.Fritz Haber - Nobel Laureate Who Killed Millions and Saved Billions - Veritasium > .

The Haber process, also called the Haber–Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia today. It is named after its inventors, the German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who developed it in the first decade of the 20th century. The process converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia(NH3) by a reaction with hydrogen (H2) using a metal catalyst under high temperatures and pressures:

\underbrace {{\ce {N2 + 3H2}}} _{\Delta H^{\circ }=0\,\mathrm {kJ} }{\ce {->}}\underbrace {{\ce {2NH3}}} _{\Delta H^{\circ }=-91.8\,\mathrm {kJ\cdot mol^{-1}} }

Before the development of the Haber process, ammonia had been difficult to produce on an industrial scale, with early methods such as the Birkeland–Eyde process and Frank–Caro process all being highly inefficient.

Although the Haber process is mainly used to produce fertilizer today, during WW1 it provided Germany with a source of ammonia for the production of explosives, compensating for the Allied Powers' trade blockade on Chilean saltpeter.

Throughout the 19th century the demand for nitrates and ammonia for use as fertilizers and industrial feedstocks had been steadily increasing. The main source was mining niter deposits. At the beginning of the 20th century it was being predicted that these reserves could not satisfy future demands and research into new potential sources of ammonia became more important. The obvious source was atmospheric nitrogen (N2), comprising nearly 80% of the air, however N2 is exceptionally stable and will not readily react with other chemicals. Converting N2 into ammonia posed a challenge for chemists globally.

Haber, with his assistant Robert Le Rossignol, developed the high-pressure devices and catalysts needed to demonstrate the Haber process at laboratory scale. They demonstrated their process in the summer of 1909 by producing ammonia from air, drop by drop, at the rate of about 125 ml (4 US fl oz) per hour. The process was purchased by the German chemical company BASF, which assigned Carl Bosch the task of scaling up Haber's tabletop machine to industrial-level production. He succeeded in 1910. Haber and Bosch were later awarded Nobel prizes, in 1918 and 1931 respectively, for their work in overcoming the chemical and engineering problems of large-scale, continuous-flow, high-pressure technology.

Ammonia was first manufactured using the Haber process on an industrial scale in 1913 in BASF's Oppau plant in Germany, reaching 20 tonnes per day the following year. During World War I, the production of munitions required large amounts of nitrate. The Allies had access to large sodium nitrate deposits in Chile (Chile saltpetre) controlled by British companies. Germany had no such resources, so the Haber process proved essential to the German war effort. Synthetic ammonia from the Haber process was used for the production of nitric acid, a precursor to the nitrates used in explosives.

....

The Haber process now produces 450 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer per year, mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea. Three to five percent of the world's natural gas production is consumed in the Haber process (around 1–2% of the world's energy supply). In combination with pesticides, these fertilizers have quadrupled the productivity of agricultural land:

With average crop yields remaining at the 1900 level the crop harvest in the year 2000 would have required nearly four times more land and the cultivated area would have claimed nearly half of all ice-free continents, rather than under 15% of the total land area that is required today.

Due to its dramatic impact on the human ability to grow food, the Haber process served as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global populationto increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.7 billion by November 2018. Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber-Bosch process. Since nitrogen use efficiency is typically less than 50%, farm runoff from heavy use of fixed industrial nitrogen disrupts biological habitats. The Haber-Bosch process is one of the largest contributors to a buildup of Reactive nitrogen in the biosphere, causing an anthropogenic disruption to the Nitrogen cycle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7l8imwtMkY

Pages

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

●● Land ◊

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Agricultural Futures - 21st C

Agriculture 1921-1939

Agriculture

Saturday, October 27, 2018

British Agriculture WW2

British Farming - Postwar

Friday, October 26, 2018

Cloches, Row Covers, Greenhouses

Crewe Tractor

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Designs for Garden Space Optimization

DfV - Dig for Victory

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Electric Fence

EU Agriculture

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Fertilizers

Food - Importing vs Exporting Nations

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Haber–Bosch process

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