User:WillShumway/Fertilizer

Management of soil fertility has preoccupied farmers since '''the beginning of agriculture. Middle Eastern, Chinese, Mesoamerican, and Cultures of the Central Andes were all early adopters of agriculture. This is thought to have lead to their cultures growing faster in population which allowed an exportation of culture to neighboring hunter gatherer groups. Fertilizer use along with agriculture allowed some of these early societies a critical advantage over their neighbors, leading them to become dominant cultures in their respective regions (P Bellwood - 2023 )'''. Egyptians, Romans, Babylonians, and early Germans are all recorded as using minerals or manure to enhance the productivity of their farms. The scientific research of plant nutrition started well before the work of German chemist Justus von Liebig although his name is most mentioned. Nicolas Théodore de Saussure and scientific colleagues at the time were quick to disprove the simplifications of von Liebig. Prominent scientists on whom von Liebig drew were Carl Ludwig Sprenger and Hermann Hellriegel. In this field, a 'knowledge erosion' took place, partly driven by an intermingling of economics and research. John Bennet Lawes, an English entrepreneur, began to experiment on the effects of various manures on plants growing in pots in 1837, and a year or two later the experiments were extended to crops in the field. One immediate consequence was that in 1842 he patented a manure formed by treating phosphates with sulfuric acid, and thus was the first to create the artificial manure industry. In the succeeding year he enlisted the services of Joseph Henry Gilbert; together they performed crop experiments at the Institute of Arable Crops Research.