Sustainability of New Zealand
farming
You must know the
past to understand the future.
Past history gives
the stories of drought, floods, crop failures and famine. In the past this was
common. Communities relied on the local crops to provide them with food for the
year ahead. A poor crop or worse still, no crop meant starvation.
It wasn’t until the
1900’s that we could tame nature and “guarantee” food production using a
variety of chemicals and fertiliser. Some call this stage in history the green
revolution. Land and fertiliser were cost effective. The cost of freighting
food from one country to another was affordable. The higher yielding crops
enabled us to almost triple the world’s production between 1950 and 1990; all
this while the farm land providing this production grew by only 10%. During
this period the world’s population doubled in numbers. This is all very good
news because this meant that there was certainty surrounding the food
supply.
However, from the
1990’s crop yields have essentially stopped rising as the world’s population
continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace. The situation we now face is static
growth of food for the population while the population continues to grow. We
must find food for the equivalent of the population of India in the next fifty
years, and nobody has a clue how to do that.
Our food reserves
as of 2017 were estimated at 74 days, or put another way if there was a
major climatic event that stopped food production, this planet would run out of
food in just ten weeks.
Although that
sounds really scary it has always been thus and I mention it merely to
emphasise the importance of New Zealand’s number one export – agriculture
– and in the same breath to highlight the importance of our very capable
farmers and those who work our land. A diversity of different ecosystems
throughout the world will hopefully ensure sustainable systems.
The sustainability
of New Zealand’s farming systems are absolutely critical and any advances that
we make in the future should bear this in mind. Doctors adhere to the belief
that whatever they do they must first and foremost do no harm to a patient.
This is not a bad rule of thumb for agriculture also.
We at Fertilizer
New Zealand firmly believe this is true and we work extremely hard to ensure
that our fertiliser programmes do not harm either the soil or the environment.
We do the opposite in fact. We enhance the health of the soil and where needed
we restore it to health after mistreatment. Our products do not leach nutrients
into waterways or aquifers which is a major problem in our country and one that
is still a long way from being remedied by the powers that be.
Our fertiliser
plans are different insofar as they nurture the environment while still
providing the nutrients needed to grow top tonnages of crops and superior grass
growth for our livestock farmers. We do not believe that there is any one
silver bullet to cure the problems faced by today’s farmers. Rather, the answer
lies in a carefully worked out programme that supplies what the plant needs
when it needs it. It is not just what one does but also how one does it that
matters. Just throwing heaps of phosphate around like farmers used to do
previously is not going to cut it any more. A carefully tailored scientific
plan is essential nowadays and that is what we provide.
The driver of a
1960’s American V8 motorcar with horrendous high fuel requirements would never
have believed that in 2018 we can get the same power out of an engine one third
the size and using about one tenth of the fuel. But that is the fact of what
the motor industry has done and we take it as the norm nowadays.
In terms of
agricultural nutrient application that is precisely what New Zealand Fertilizer
is aiming to do, and succeeding.
From John Barnes
and the Team at Fertilizer New Zealand
