Abstract
AS the demand of the white races for wheat as a foodstuff increases, the acreage devoted to wheat growing increases, but at a less rapid rate; and being limited by climatic conditions will in a few years, perhaps less than thirty, be entirely taken up. Then, as Sir William Crookes pointed out in his presidential address in 1898, there will be a wheat famine, unless the world's yield per acre (at present about 12.7 bushels per acre on the average) can be raised by use of fertilisers. Of such fertilisers the chief is nitrate of soda, exported from the nitre beds in Chili. The demand for this has risen froin 1,000,000 tons in 1892 to 1,543,120 tons in 1905, and the supply will at the present rate be exhausted in less than fifty years. Then the only chance of averting starvation lies, as Crookes pointed out, through the laboratory.
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The Electric Production of Nitrates from the Atmosphere 1 . Nature 73, 355–356 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/073355a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073355a0