March 2014

VIEWPOINT

with John Barnes, Managing Director – March 2014

Its encouraging to see the dairy payout up where I believe it should be. For far too long dairy farmers have been the price takers, not the price makers.

The same could be said for dry stock farmers. In my opinion, wool should be a premium product. It is natural and the world is looking for natural products. It is light weight and is completely free of toxins. As the world continues to turn to greener products, wool should gain popularity, but sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case. We are an innovative people and we need to be leading the way by adding value to all of our primary produce, which is what the dairy industry is doing.

As I write this some of our farmlands are getting much needed rain, which I hope will signal the start of good autumn growth. Much of New Zealand has experienced a dry spell and for some it has been severe. The southern part of the South Island has been the exception, where pasture growth has been good all season. As I drove through this area last week I could not help noticing the amount of supplement which has been stored and the winter crops are looking good.

As the autumn growth progresses it is time to think ahead as to how to prepare for spring. I believe preparation is important and there are many things we can do to make the toughest season of the year go more smoothly.

“Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised!”

Plan to have your stock in the best possible condition, with the most amount of feed available. Part of the plan should include checking magnesium levels in the soil and later in the leaf of the pasture. Magnesium is essential for pastoral growth and animal health.

While many companies are selling a variety of products that will fix deficiencies, we believe that if the soil has the correct amount of magnesium in the correct ratio with the correct biological activity, many of the problems will be solved.

Use a magnesium that has the highest percentage of active ingredient possible. It will cost more to carry less active ingredient. If lime is required, buy that from a source closer to your farm. The magnesium needs to be active enough to give an agronomic benefit by spring. There are some fast acting magnesium products available that can meet these requirements. For further information on this give us a call.

Magnesium is required in the soil to ease compaction. Because of its qualities, magnesium in the correct ratio will keep soil friable. Too much magnesium will turn the soil gluggy causing it to hold water and ultimately leading to compaction. Some sales people tend to lift their sales by selling too much magnesium.

Chlorophyll and magnesium are related in that the chlorophyll molecule contains a magnesium ion. Green plants are dependent on chlorophyll for photosynthesis, and magnesium is required for chlorophyll production. This element is therefore an essential nutrient for green plants. In the process of photosynthesis, green plants use energy from sunlight to synthesise glucose from water and carbon dioxide. Oxygen is produced as a by-product of this reaction and so this process is largely responsible for maintaining oxygen levels on the planet.

As I have already said, regardless of which product you choose, it needs to be working by spring. This is why the majority of magnesium is applied in February and March. It takes that long to take effect. We have some products which will work a lot faster. It has always been my aim to provide a range of products which can be tailor-made to fit your requirements.

For example, if a very quick response is required, a liquid is needed to get the element into the leaf. In my experience we have corrected the deficiency in two to three days with a liquid application. A medium term fix can be achieved in three to four weeks by applying a biologically active magnesium product. I have been manufacturing this type of product now for over 15 years with very good results. This product is part of our VitaLife range.

VitaLife Magnesium is an effective way of solving a magnesium deficiency and gaining better biological activity. Often we look at the NPK elements of the soil as the most important and forget about all the others. Another element that is important for plant growth is boron.

Without boron, plants will not grow as they should. However, as is often the case with the proper balance of nutrients in the soil, more is not always better. And there’s more to it than just making sure boron is present in the right quantites. For instance, the use of fertilisers based on phosphate, potash and nitrogen intensifies acidity in the soil and reduces the availability of magnesium, zinc, copper and boron. The level of specific minerals in soil can usually be measured, but there are also crucial side-effects of too-high or too-low mineral levels.

Take mycorrhiza for example. Mycorrhiza? It’s a fungus that grows on plant roots when crops are in good healthy soil. These fungi are indispensible because their job is to send out threads that gather water and minerals from the soil and collect carbohydrates from the roots, then combine this water, minerals and carbohydrates to make protein, which is injected into the growing plant root. Fungi make high-quality protein and vitamins and improve the quality and health of the plant, and subsequently the quality and health of the produce, and the physical quality and health of animals and humans.

Back to boron though, because the presence of the correct boron levels in soil is critical in the uptake and development of these crucial fungi (mycorrhiza). Chemical fertilisers inhibit both boron uptake by soil and mycorrhiza growth. It’s all to do with replenishment and balance. When we take something from the soil in the form of a crop, we need to put something back – what ever is needed to maintain the nutrient balance. True, if the nutrient mix is out of balance, plants will do their best to struggle on without the help of fungi and bacteria, but they will lack the health-giving properties of similar plants grown in well composted, well balanced soil.

It used to be thought that boron was “immobile” in plants – that it concentrated in one spot in a plant. However it is now known that boron certainly knows how to spread itself around the plant world. Research at the University of California’s Davis campus has revealed that boron is indeed highly mobile, although this mobility does vary from species to species. The Davis work shows that boron is particularly mobile in all plant species that use simple sugars (known as polyols) as primary compounds in the process of photosynthesis.

As boron moves around the plant it carries calcium with it and as we all know at Fertiliser New Zealand, calcium is king!

It has been shown by overseas studies that a lack of boron within the animal kingdom can increase the risk of some arthritic conditions. Closer to home, work carried out in New Zealand by Dr. Rex Newnham, Ph.D., D.O., N.D, said the following, and I quote from his paper, “Boron is essential. It corrects and prevents arthritis. The availability of boron from the soil is decreasing to very low levels, due to the increasing use of N.P.K. fertilisers. Where it is the lowest, 0.5 to 1.5 ppm available boron from the soil, we have 20% of the population with arthritis.”

Is it any wonder why we add boron in the form of ulexite, which is a slow release boron, to many of our fertiliser programmes.

For us to get a true insight into the boron status of any crop a plant analysis test needs to be taken. Once these levels are established it will allow our staff to establish the remedial steps needed to rectify the problem. For further information, please give us a call.