BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Did you know that Jethro Tull was an 18th century soils expert and inventor who revolutionized British agriculture? Or, how about this: did you know Sterquilinus was the Roman god of fertilizer and manure? These and other interesting facts pertaining to soil were brought to the surface by Tim Smith, a soils expert and owner of CropSmith, Inc., of Gibson City, Ill., during the recent “Talk Dirt to Me: Soil Test Interpretation for Profitable Management” seminar.

“Automation will soon take the human element out of soil testing. Soil will be collected by machine and GPS will be used to electronically write the location (of the sample) on the tube, noting exactly where it came from, while providing a map on a computer of exactly where (all field) samples came from,” said Smith, a certified agronomist known for his work in soil fertility, nitrogen management and conservation. “But today, I’m here to talk about the past.”

Smith’s informative presentation on the history of fertilizers and soil science research – and its various colorful characters – served as a refreshing and entertaining break from a morning full of technical seminars about soil nutrients. A lot of today’s soil nutrient research and measurement techniques originate from the 1930s and early 1940s, according to Smith, a former visiting soil research specialist at the University of Illinois.

He explained that the value of using fertilizers to boost crop productivity was perhaps first documented within the Holy Bible: “There is a parable (Luke 13:6-9) about a gardener that had a fig tree in his vineyard, and the owner told him to cut it down. He was (eventually) advised to use manure to help grow figs the next year. This shows we’ve been working to improve how we grow crops for a long time.”

Fertilizer history goes back as many as 12,000 years, Smith continued, with plant domestication beginning between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. Practices to improve soil fertility, including irrigation and manuring, can be traced as far back as early Mesopotomian and Greek civilizations.

More recently, French Huguenot potter, hydraulics engineer and craftsman Bernard Palissy (1510-1589) noted that “manure is carried to the field for the purpose of restoring to the latter a portion of what had been removed…by previous crops and which following crops will regain to their advantage,” according to Smith.

“We’re here today to talk about how to better use our fertilizers, and they were also talking about that back in the 1500s.”

The 1600s through the 1800s offer glimpses of the foundations of modern soil science and agriculture, with different elements of the soils first being discovered and recorded by scientists, Smith continued. He cited others who contributed to the development of fertilizers, including Henning Brandt, who identified phosphorus from human urine in 1669, Daniel Rutherford, who first published the elements of nitrogen in 1772 (referred to as “noxious air” by Rutherford; three other scientists also claim to have discovered nitrogen that year), and Joseph Priestly, who in 1774 discovered nitrous oxide and ammonia.

Sir Humphrey Davy, a British chemist, used electrolysis to isolate and identify potassium in 1807, and later used the same method to isolate sodium, or potash. Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner first produced ammonia using a platinum catalyst in 1823, and in 1840 Justus Von Liebig advocated for the addition of certain nutrients to the soil for plant growth. In 1856, Jules Reiset recognized that decaying matter releases N, providing the basis for the N cycle.

“It was during the 1600s through 1800s when (scientists) really first started discovering all of the elements, and the ways these guys figured these things out is just amazing,” Smith said. “Some of these guys are really heroes because of the work they did, how they did the work, and how they figured things out over time.”

Among the early soil scientists was Tull (1674-1741), whose essay on the “Principles of Vegetation and Tillage” contended that by stirring, or cultivating, soils, valuable nutrients that would aid plant growth would be released. “He was not an advocate of fertilizers or manure; he felt that stirring the soil would give you what you need. He was also the person who invented the first grain planting drill, basically,” said Smith, adding that yes, this was the same Jethro Tull who, post-mortem, inspired the name of a famous 1970s rock music group.

Continuing, Smith chronicled how in 1909, Danish scientist S.P.L. Sorenson invented the pH scale. Relatedly, Arnold Beckman (1900-2004) of Collum, Ill., was credited with developing the first pH acidity meter in 1934. “In the first year (Beckman) sold 195 of these and in the second year he sold 440. He also built spectrometers,” Smith said.

The history of soil science and fertilizers is not entirely a bed of roses, so to speak; it comes with both heroes and villains. Most notably, Franz Huber (1886-1934) developed the Haber-Bosch Process of synthesizing ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, creating a process to produce vast quantities of nitrogen fertilizer.

“He saved millions of people in the world from starvation. If we didn’t have the nitrogen available through this process we wouldn’t be able to support the population on earth we have today,” Smith noted. “Unfortunately, he was also known as the Father of Modern Warfare. During World War I he was working with the German government, was very loyal to the Kaiser and developed some of the early chemical weapons.”

The morning-long “Talk Dirt to Me” seminar was Dec. 11 at the office of the Illinois Soybean Association in Bloomington.