Nitrates for bombs become nitrates for industrial agriculture

In the United States today, two completely different agriculture systems exist side by side: industrial agriculture, typified by the almond orchards described earlier, and organic agriculture.  I find it ironic that these two very different methods of food production originated during the same time period, World War II and immediately thereafter. 

Modern industrial agriculture grew up on Army and Navy leftovers.  With the end of the was in 1945, large surpluses of two important war materials existed: nitrate of ammonium (used to make war-time explosives) and nerve gases (used to kill South Pacific mosquitoes and African lice.)

In 1947, the massive munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, converted to civilian use.  Instead of using its stock of ammonium nitrate to make explosives for bombs, the site began to use the war surplus to make fertilizers for farms.  The government briefly considered using the excess nitrates on forest to increase wood production.  The goal could be easily accomplished by dropping planeloads of the powdery stuff at treetop level.  But proponents of agriculture won out over forestry. 

Though artificial nitrogen fertilizer was first used in the 1920s, global economic and political setbacks kept its use and distribution dormant for the next twenty-five years.  Likewise, the early use of DDT, discovered by an entomologist in 1939, had been restricted to military use.  The products were now poised to find their way into a civilian commercial market.  At first, sales of both artificial fertilizer and pesticides just crept along.  Then, in the 1950s, sales and use exploded.  The end result plays out today in multi-mile almond orchards, vast cornfields, and up-dated nerve agents to control insects.