History of the Forster Soil Management Soil Fertility Model

By forstersoilmanagement

  • Baron Justus von Liebig ("Father of the Fertilizer Industry")

    He develops synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and popularizes the "Law of the Minimum" - "stating that a plant's development is limited by the one essential mineral that is in the relatively shortest supply". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_von_Liebig

  • Oscar Loew suggests possibility of an optimum Calcium:Magnesium ratio

    Oscar Loew

  • Julius Hensel publishes "Bread from Stones"

    Overview of using ground up rocks to fertilize crops.
  • Period: to

    Dr. William A. Albrecht conducts research at the University of Missouri

    William Albrecht

  • Ideal balance of cations in soil is published

    Base Cation Saturation Ratio

  • End of WWII

    Chemical companies, with huge wartime manufacturing capacity, need to find a new use for their products. Massive amounts of research money is spent, much of it funneled through Universities, to find new markets. One promising market is in agriculture.

  • Dr. Albrecht is 'retired'

    Dr. William A. Albrecht is forced into retirement at the University of Missouri as he would not go along with the shifting focus of agricultural research towards synthetic chemicals that accelerated immediately after World War II to find new markets for wartime chemical production capacity.

  • "Hands on Agronomy" published

    Neal Kinsey and Charles Walters refine the ideal ratios in the book, "Hands on Agronomy".

  • "The Ideal Soil: A Handbook for The New Agriculture" is published

    Agricola Interview