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Show WATER FOR UTAH ... . Production and Present Markets ... It has t been noted that the production of fertilizer materials in Utah has not been very significant to date. Its phosphate reserves have been barely touched, and there has been no production of phosphorus materials in the State. Although potash resources in Utah have contributed a substantial part of national requirements, they have not yet been utilized to major consequence for fertilizer manufacture within the State. Sulphuric acid, required for the fertilizer industry, has been shipped almost entirely out of the State, except that used for ammonium sulphate production. On the other hand, ammonium sulphate from Utah's by- product coke ovens at Geneva, amounting to 43,000,000 pounds in 1947, has been consumed almost completely for fertilizer purposes in the State. The market situation, as it relates to Utah's potentials, is as anomalous as the State's resources outlook. The Western States' consumption of fertilizer material in 1946 was estimated at 9 % of the national total or about 1,300,000 tons for all commercial fertilizer, or an equivalent 225,000 tons of plant food. This amount, in terms of contained plant food, represented roughly 1031,000 tons of nitrogen equivalent, 90,000 tons of phosphorus equivalent and 25,000 tons of potassium equivalent. As will be pointed out further, these amounts are far below western needs for minimum desirable replenishment of plant nutrients. However, even their production in the West was far below the existing market levels. In keeping with the national pattern of concentration of 90% of the fertilizer capacity in Eastern and Southern States, there were only four plants in the West: one at Anaconda, manufacturing triple- super phosphate; two in California and one in southeastern Idaho for the production of ordinary low concentration superphosphates. ... The Potentials of Utah's Fertilizer Industry ... With very few exceptions, most cultivated areas of the United States are becoming deficient in soil nutrients. As a rule, cropping has removed more plant food from the Nation's soil than was replenished by the application of fertilizer. This condition is particularly true in the states west of the Mississippi. ( See Map 19 - Phosphate Removal by Crops; Phosphate Fertilizer Consumption - page 74%) For instance, the deficiency in phosphate plant food nutrients has been variously estimated during the past few years as ranging annually between 400,000 and 800,000 tons of P205 in the seventeen Western States. In contrast, the amount of phosphate fertilizer which was applied to the soils of this area amounted only to 38,000 tons of P205 in 1939, gradually rising to 198,000 tons of ? 2Os in 1946, far below requirements. The same general situation exists for other component plant food nutrients, although the greatest and most critical deficiency is in phosphorus, which is recognized as the keystone element in soil structures for agriculture. " i Two and one- half million farmers located in states as far east as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan are involved in this potential market, which is relatively wide open to western producers. However, distances of the western phosphate resources to these markets have offered a major obstacle to western fertilizer development. Modern technology provides a practical answer to this problem. In order to make possible shipments of fertilizer material over long distances and therefore to reduce the inherent freight costs, it is obvious that the greater the concentration of plant food in the material shipped, the less will be the freight increment per unit of plant food to the ultimate consumer. Until rather recently, the majority of fertilizer manufacturers produced ordinary superphosphate, of which the available plant food content was on the order of 18% P205 with some manufactured material, such as triple superphosphate, containing as high as 48% P205. Usually the markets profitably available to low concentration fertilizer manufacturers were limited to a relatively small distance from producing plant; the others were able to ship greater distances. Therefore, for western fertilizer producers to fake advantage of a naturally competitive market reaching over the entire seventeen Western States and even farther to the East, they must produce highly concentrated materials, such as triple superphosphates on up to elemental phosphorus, the latter representing the material which can be shipped farthest competitively. [ 73] |