viewpoint
May 2016
with John Barnes – Managing Director
Where is the Dialogue?
As I travel around the country and as our Reps bring in their weekly reports we are hearing from dairy farmers that they are not getting feedback from their dairy companies, Fonterra in particular.
In today’s world with the internet and all of our sophisticated means of communication this is surprising and concerning. Like us, and all businesses today, farmers are required to front up to the bank on a regular basis and tell them where their business is at and make predictions for the future. That is not easy when your dairy company, even with all its worldwide contacts, does not seem to be able to give much guidance as to future prices. In fact, farmers are telling us that they simply do not know what is going on any more.
Farmers have always accepted the market variances with stoicism, safe in the knowledge that their dairy company will warn them of impending price fluctuations. In the present situation this was a major downturn that appeared out of the blue. The downturn was followed by widespread assurances that the drop was temporary and prices would soon recover. As we now know these assurances were hollow but they continued for a full twelve months.
In my business I am up against the big guys but I still spend a lot of time talking to people and finding out what is going on. A big company would call this market analysis and pay someone a million bucks to do it but I call it networking.
That is the hub of the problem isn’t it?!!! If the executives pulling the big dollars don’t know or will not say what is going on, the shareholder farmers lose confidence real fast. I feel sorry for farmers who are put in an embarrassing position by this lack of market analysis and I believe that it is time for Fonterra in particular to do better in this regard.
I know that I am just the guy who supplies fertiliser but uncertainty in the farming sector affects us too.
Last month we talked about carbon, an essential ingredient in the soil. Essential because without carbon and organic matter, soils become moon dust. We can bring it back to earth by taking a look at an area where 3000 thousand years ago, according to written history, this area had thriving forests and provided food for much of the then known world. That land is the area North Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea, which included Egypt.
Closer to home we have at the northern tip of the South Island an area called Farewell Spit, mainly made up of sand dunes. A light house was built on this sand spit in 1869 and the light was commissioned in 1870. For this to be maintained people had to live there. As would be expected these people wanted to grow vegetables and trees in this inhospitable place. Many tried and failed. Why? Because it was pure sand filled with salt. An enterprising light house keeper had the clever idea of bringing in soil from a farm near the base of the spit. So every time he went out to collect the mail and buy provisions he brought back with him several bags of soil. Over time he started to plant pine trees and this provided some shelter and shade which in turn provided an environment to grow a garden. It all started with some soil and by definition organic matter which included carbon. Today when you fly into Nelson on a clear day you will see these trees.
Soil is soil only if it has biological activity, otherwise it could be described as moon dust or the Sahara Desert, indeed part of Farewell Spit. It could be argued that soils should be our first priority as the health of plant, animals and people all rely on a healthy soil for our entire existence. Soils are alive. Take a look at a handful of soil under a microscope. It is quite fascinating; in fact I would describe it as the world’s last frontier. It is our thinking that soils need to be topped up with more beneficial soil life just as we top up with fertiliser. Without beneficial life, fertiliser will not work and carbon will diminish as it had in many parts of the world. If we were to take carbon and water back to the Sahara it would be possible to grow crops just as it did thousands of years ago.
We know that healthy soil produces healthy crops and healthy pastures, which in turn produce healthy animals and healthy products and, ultimately, healthy humans. One of the secrets to Fertilizer NZ’s success is our access to special microbes that are renowned internationally for their ability to bring added value to soil. These microbes mycorrhizal fungi – have been shown to increase plants’ ability to absorb soil nutrients. There is a best balance of micro-organisms for each type of plant. If it’s right, the plant lives at its healthiest, and often yields to higher levels.
By judicious use of these fungi, phosphate in the soil can be used more efficiently, less nitrogen fertiliser needs to be used and, all the time, production is maintained.
While several million microbes live in the soil, even more (up to 100 times more, in fact) live near and in the roots of plants. These microbes give phosphate to roots and in return receive carbon dioxide. In other words, they do naturally what nitrogen fertiliser is intended to do.
Mycorrhizal fungi are widespread in New Zealand’s native forests, native tussock, and agricultural and horticultural soils. They spread out into the soil, increasing the area of the host plant’s root system and stimulating soil phosphorus uptake. This improves clover growth at low to moderate soil-phosphorus levels and ryegrass growth at high soil-nitrogen levels.
Some strains of these fungi are more efficient than others, and some soils contain only inefficient species. The introduction of the more efficient fungi to these soils will increase plant growth through enhanced uptake of phosphorus.
It’s easy to overlook microbes. They’re infinitesimal beings so tiny you need a high-powered microscope just to sight them. They are so numerous that a teaspoon of soil contains more
bacteria than there are people in the world.
And our entire existence depends on these unseen earthlings.
Obviously, at Fertilizer NZ, we are aware of the crucial significance of microbes. We are not alone. Many scientists and soil specialists around the world are aware of how much we depend on them, even though it is believed that barely 6% of soil microbes have been discovered out of potentially 1.5 million species of fungi, 1 million species of nematode worms, and similar multitudes of bacteria.
One is Landcare Research scientist Graham Sparling who sums up soil succinctly: soil is soil only if it has biological activity, otherwise it’s dead like moon dust – and we are lucky to have it in New Zealand. He is adamant humans have gone too far in their abuse of the soil that is their life-blood.