Vintage farm supply ads that are surprisingly beautiful, 1900s

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, farms began to use new machinery and fertilizers, which transformed them from small-scale enterprises into food factories.

Entrepreneurs selling products designed to increase farmer output were eager to bring their brands to these new rural customers. Thus the spread of farm signage and advertising from this period.

Old farm and agricultural icons ran the gamut from tasteful or humorous notices on lithographed paper to bold proclamations on embossed tin and porcelain enamel.

Some advertisers, such as feed supplier American Stock Food, used patriotic symbols such as Uncle Sam to sell their goods, while Monarch Poultry Feeds used wooden cutouts of chicken.

The history of fertilizer has largely shaped political, economic and social conditions in its traditional uses. Subsequently, the development of chemically synthesized fertilizers has been followed by a radical change in environmental conditions.

The Egyptians, Romans, Babylonians, and early Germans have all been recorded as using minerals and/or manure to increase the productivity of their farms. The use of wood ash as a field treatment became widespread.

Fish was used as fertilizer, at least as far back as 1620. In the 19th century, guano, which had been known and used in the Andes for at least 1500 years, was taken in large quantities from Peru and Chile (and later also from Namibia). and other regions) to Europe and the United States.

Organized research into fertilizer technology began in the early seventeenth century. Early scientists such as Francis Bacon and Johann Glauber describe the beneficial effects of adding saltpeter to the soil.

Glauber developed the first complete mineral fertilizer, which was a mixture of saltpeter, lime, phosphoric acid, nitrogen and potash.

As scientific chemical theories developed, the chemical requirements of plants were discovered, leading to improvements in the composition of fertilizers.

Organic chemist Justus von Liebig demonstrated that plants needed minerals such as nitrogen and phosphorous to grow.

The chemical fertilizer industry can be said to have started with a patent issued to Sir John Laws that outlined a method for producing a form of phosphate that was an effective fertilizer.

Dan Albon built the first commercially successful gasoline-powered general purpose tractor in 1901, and the 1923 International Harvester Farmall tractor marked a major point in the replacement of draft animals (especially horses) with machines.

Since that time, self-propelled mechanical harvesters (combinations), planters, transplanters and other equipment have been developed, further revolutionizing agriculture.

These inventions allowed farming operations to be performed at speeds and scales previously impossible, leading to higher amounts of high-quality produce per land unit in modern farms.

The Haber–Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate represented a major breakthrough and allowed crop yields to overcome previous constraints.

It was first patented by the German chemist Fritz Haber. In 1910, Karl Bosch, working for the German chemical company BASF, successfully commercialized the process and obtained further patents. In the years following World War II, the use of synthetic fertilizer increased rapidly with the growing world population.

Modern agriculture has raised social, political and environmental issues, including overpopulation, water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and agricultural subsidies. In response, organic farming developed in the twentieth century as an alternative to the use of synthetic pesticides.