Agricultural Bacteriology
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217677486
Paperback|9780217677486
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Overview
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II. BACTERIA IN SOIL AND WATER. CHAPTER III. THE ORIGIN OF SOIL. THE CONTINUATION OF THE FOOD SUPPLY. The farmer's occupation consists in converting soil and air into human food. While his duties seem to be varied they all resolve themselves into extracting from the soil and from the air certain ingredients which are induced to combine into such a form as will serve for food. Whether it be the potatoes that he digs from the ground, the fruit that he plucks from the trees, the wheat that he gathers from the fields, the milk that he draws from the cow, or the flesh that he sends to the butcher, in all cases the product has been enticed by the farmer from mother earth. Chemistry has not advanced to a stage where the elements can be made to combine directly, to produce the materials wanted for food, and the agriculturist, therefore, is obliged to depend upon secondary agents. Throughout nature, life is the agent which he uses for producing this combination of soil and air into human food. Plant life and animal life both contribute to the process, but it is through life alone that the chemical combinations which result in the production of food are possible. The larger part of the material from which food is manufactured is derived from the inexhaustible supplies in the atmos- phere, but a considerable portion, and an extremely important part of it, is derived directly from the soil. While the atmosphere is practically inexhaustible in its supply of plant food, this is not true of the soil. When the soil is chemically analyzed it is found to contain a certain amount of material that can serve as plant food, but this material is limited in quantity, and whenever a plant grows upon soil it extracts a certain amount of this limited food supply. This being the case, ..
| ISBN-13 | 9780217677486 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217677487 |
| Weight | 0.94 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.64 In |
| List Price | $22.26 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 286 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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