June 2013

VIEWPOINT

with John Barnes, Managing Director – June 2013

Plenty of Talk

As part of keeping in touch with industry matters I attended the Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery Creek outside Hamilton and met with many people who are involved in the same business as us. It is a great place to liaise with people who for a few days are all accessible in one spot.

My overriding impressions are twofold:

The first is that we are definitely on the right track at Fertilizer New Zealand with farmers searching for new ways of doing things. Farmers and particularly dairy farmers have a growing awareness, or should I say unease, that the present use of huge amounts of acid treated phosphate plus huge amounts of Nitrogen may not be sustainable in the future. This is the good part in my view, and to be honest I feel that we have been ahead of the game on this.

Secondly and more concerning is the fact that there is a lot of talk in industry circles about the need to be more environmentally aware. This comes from both industry heavyweights and the Ministry of Primary Industries who were the feature sponsors of the Fieldays this year. However, the conversations behind closed doors are very different and there is very much an attitude of “Lets calm the concerns of the public who show disquiet over the environment while we carry on pretty much as usual”. I will leave it at that. But suffice to say, at Fertilizer New Zealand we hold a far more positive view because we realise that environmental issues are the elephant in the room in any discussion on agriculture, and we are doing something about that issue for our increasing number of valued customers.

The Wonderfully Hidden World

Turn over a shovel of healthy soil, sink your hand into its richness and you’re venturing into an unknown; the world of microbial interactions.

Without microbes, crops wouldn’t grow, people and animals would starve. The Earth itself would die. But with microbes the soil lives and breathes as we do.

Within this healthy soil environment is the earthworm. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Research tells us that the soil ingested by these amazing creatures contains 10 to 12 times the fertility of the surrounding soil. On top of all that, the earthworm burrows stay intact for up to three years depending on soil type. Roots can enter these burrows and go down after moisture.

Soil microbes – all these little creatures that you can not see – are very valuable, just like the worms. They are eating and excreting. They are building the soil.

That is why more organic soils are more forgiving in what can be done with them. Organic soils contain a greater amount of carbon, and carbon and organic matter is the home for most of the biological life in soils.

There is growing evidence as farmers continue to use Fertilizer New Zealand products that carbon levels are lifting. There are good reasons for this. Thatch and dry pasture is being turned into organic matter by the actions of various microbes. Soil-borne microbes are sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, reversing what is happening on chemical-based farms. C.E.C. levels lift as a result of this, leading to a better capacity of soil to hold nutrients. Those soils will also have a greater water holding capacity.

With all this activity going on in the soil, production levels will lift, giving a greater return for dollars spent. Plants benefit from an enriched soil, allowing for a greater root system. The greater the root system, the larger the “Power House” for the plant.

On many farms today the limiting factor is not the lack of fertiliser, it is the ability of the plant to take up the nutrients from the fertilisers. A poor root system is easy to detect; just dig and look.

The rhizosphere (the area surrounding each root hair) should be teeming with biological activity. It is a dynamic system of life, change, struggle and death. We may not understand it completely, but in its own way, your soils should be just as alive as we are.

I had the privilege to meet with a soil scientist whose name is Dr Jim Bruce-Smith.

Dr Jim started out his working life as a lecturer at the then Lincoln College back in the early 1960’s. His subject was “Soil Fertility”. He became interested in a holistic approach to soil fertility, spurred on by two farmers.

The first farmer was Brown Trotter in Fairlie, who was mixing his own trace elements and administering them to his lambs. These lambs were gaining weight faster than the district average.

The second farmer was Percy Weston from Australia, who was making his own trace element mix and getting great results from his livestock.

Jim took a great interest in both farmers and spent time talking to them about their findings. Armed with this knowledge, Jim put together his own trace element mix and actively talked about his findings at Lincoln.

Apparently this was not acceptable to the bosses there who wanted him to just concentrate on the benefits of Super Phosphate. So Jim moved on, completed his Ph.D in Australia and spent time in China and Africa on projects.

MegaTonic Mineral MixWhen I met him he had returned from Africa and had “retired” to Canterbury. We soon built up a great working relationship which grew into Jim becoming Fertilizer New Zealand’s first soil scientist. We now have Jim’s original trace element mix which we call MegaTonic.

MegaTonic is a great nutritional boost for maintaining consistently healthy animals. This product has been specially formulated in New Zealand for New Zealand conditions to supplement and promote growth and well being in sheep, beef, cattle, dairy and deer. It was developed by none other than Dr Jim Bruce-Smith.

For more information on this product, visit our MegaTonic page on the Fertilizer New Zealand website or call us on 0800 337 869.

MAGNESIUM

The amount of magnesium in soils has a big impact on how well the farm will perform. It would be hard to think of another element (apart from calcium) that influences a farm’s profitability so much. True, every single element is important whether it is a trace element or a major element such as N.P.K.S.

But as calving and lambing is coming up fast, lets take a look at what magnesium will do for your operation.

In the soil

In the soil, magnesium rates alongside calcium. Magnesium at the right rate will help keep the soil friable. Too little magnesium, and soils will be compacted. Too much, and the soils will be equally unworkable. Many, if not all, of the magnesium sources in New Zealand take months to work. Applying magnesium fertilisers now will not fix short term magnesium problems. That is why we have developed our VitaLife range which along with the microbes, break down magnesium so that it will work faster, giving you results during this spring.

In the leaf

Magnesium is an important element for rapid plant growth. Magnesium is important for photosynthesis because it forms the central atom of chlorophyll. Therefore without sufficient amounts of magnesium, plants begin to degrade the chlorophyll in the old leaves causing Chlorosis, or yellowing between leaf veins, which stay green. As magnesium is mobile in nature, the plant takes the magnesium from the older leaves and transfers it to the younger leaves which have greater photosynthetic needs.

Within the animal

The overriding factor here is, magnesium is not stored well in animals, so regular daily intakes are necessary. Often farmers blood test for elements including magnesium. However, some magnesium can be stored in limited amounts in various parts of the body. If magnesium is short in the blood, it will transfer this element from other areas to the blood. The only conclusion is if magnesium is deficient in the blood, there will be none anywhere else in that animal. Minor deficiencies in the blood will show as a sub-clinical problem. Sub-clinical deficiencies will lose 10% production. Checking for sub-clinical symptoms is something that farmers need to look for. In cows these are; the head down, lack of energy in the paddock, flighty in the shed.

Ways to overcome these problems

ACTAVIZE

Short Term – To get a 24-48 hour response, use Actavize on the pasture. This product is designed for better animal health.

VITALIFE MAGNESIUM

This will take 2-3 weeks to work but not only does it release magnesium into the plant but it activates the soil with live microbes.

A TIME FOR REFLECTION

This last growing season has seen a lot of action and, in some cases, inaction.

Weather wise it started out wet and no fertiliser could go out, then it turned dry – very dry – and then the autumn was wet with very good grass growth. This led to a lot of anguish for most farmers.
When all the numbers are added up and totals come in, I would not be surprised if they don’t come in about average of what we would normally expect for most areas.

The results of the combination of wet and dry conditions have led to the country’s average of primary products being down, but not so for some of our clients. The clients who have used our full programme have proved yet again that if soil structure is correct and the root system is strong and the correct species of pasture is growing, then adverse weather conditions can be farmed through. Why?

Farmers today face two major options:

The Chemical system

This could be defined as fixing problems using a chemical process. This system has had some problems this season. The first came with the Environmental Courts ruling against the practice of using excessive nitrogen and phosphate. The response to this was – “Not our fault. It is the clovers and the stock that create this nitrogen run off. To fix it we will tweak the computer programmes to reflect that the application of N products is not the problem”.

D.C.D. raised its head again. This time they found small amounts in milk products. A major newspaper overseas asked “Is our milk safe?” This is terrible news as we pride ourselves on the “clean green image”.

As the fifth generation that has a connection with land in New Zealand I am proud of what has been achieved over the past 160 years. But with a headline like this and the subsequent response, it has left me concerned. The Authorities sat on it for several months and only when they thought it would be ‘safe’ to let the story out did they release it. This only led to more concern.

The next story to break was cadmium. This problem doesn’t seem to go away and nor should it. Some fertiliser companies don’t seem to want to say what the cadmium levels are in their products. Other companies have no problem saying what their levels are. From my point of view, they should be down around 10-20ppm. If they were, then there would be no problems.

The Biological system

This system is different. While it uses nitrogen, phosphate, potash, sulphur, calcium, magnesium and many other elements, they are in a balanced system so that no one element has dominance over the others. Biological systems also make sure the soil is friable with good water-holding capacity. Soils should look good and smell good, along with a healthy amount of soil fungi and bacteria.

A common remark from the chemical group is that the biological group don’t have enough science around their system. There may not be much in New Zealand, but around the world there is an amazing amount of work.

For more information call us today on 0800 337 869