Better soils with Brett Petersen Kiwi Fertiliser & Golden Bay Dolomite

After many years of getting farmers to apply fertilisers they don’t need, the New Zealand fertiliser industry has introduced mitigating programmes. This will allow the same bad habits to continue, albeit with some flowery words thrown in. A leopard does not change its spots, so let’s just keep selling the same products to the farmers whether they need them or not.

Oddly enough, those farmers who haven’t continued to apply polluting and unhealthy fertilisers do not need to be “mitigated”. To keep the faithful’s blind faith simmering the word is that production will suffer if reductions in phosphate and nitrogen applications occur. This is simply not true. Look at the mega-data. In the 1960s and 1970s The Department of Agriculture was consistently measuring 17tonnes and 18 tonnes of dry matter grown on Waikato dairy farms. How many farms are growing anything like that these days? Up until 1979, urea was not used in NZ.

The health of dairy cows has fallen to an all-time low. Urea does not produce good health or quantity. Its use has increased from nil to 400,000 tonnes five years ago. Since then it has doubled to 800,000 tonnes. The race to the bottom is well and truly on. Many of Kiwi Fertiliser’s clients produce more than 20 tonnes of high quality dry matter without urea and with very little bagged nitrogen in total. There are 74,000 tonnes of nitrogen above every hectare. This free source can’t be directly accessed by plants, but it can be captured via microbes when the soil is properly balanced and the microbes haven’t been nuked.

Fundamentals missing

Certain fundamentals are missing by those that keep on doing what they have always done for the same results or worse. These fundamentals need to be restored for farms to be able to move forward. Good microbes are common to soil, plants, animals and humans. Most have been obliterated by poor management practices including soil fertility, animal feed and chemical spray choices. Imbalanced and depleted soil and soil carbon has led to a reduction in the very organisms that can increase production and health. Naturally occurring high-health regimes have been replaced by an increase in weeds, disease organisms and diseases. To counter disease symptoms and weeds, we have increased the use of chemical ‘therapeutics’. These chemical weapons do nothing to treat the causes and prevent diseases in future. In fact, they perpetuate the downhill spiral.

Good aerobic organisms are replaced by anaerobic and parasitic organisms when industrial conditions are created instead of holistic natural biological systems that are conducive to high-health status.

Monoculture and modern plant varieties suit the soluble fertiliser industry. They are not created to improve farmer’s profitability; nor do they multi-species, pastures will. Running systems at low pHs alter the microbial spectrum for the worse in soil, vegetation, animals and humans. Good microbes drive the immune systems of all animals including humans. Further, depleted microbial populations lead to reduction of soil carbon, erosion of soil and polluted water systems.

Major limitation

A major limitation to plant growth in most agricultural soils is an inadequate supply of plant nutrients, regardless of supply in the soil. These are caused by human-induced imbalances. Iron crystals have a large surface area and are highly charged. As a result nutrients such as phosphate, sulphate and trace elements are tightly bound to the crystals and unavailable to plants. If anaerobic micro-sites are able to develop, the crystals break down and release the nutrients for plant uptake. Ferrous iron is released into the soil. Other nutrients including calcium, magnesium, potassium and ammonium are held on the surface of clay and organic matter. The release of ferrous iron displaces these nutrients into the soil solution where they are available for uptake by plants.

Farming techniques that encourage the oxidation of the soil give short-term increases in plant growth. That creates long-term problems of nutrient depletion along with increased plant disease problems. Diseases are more prevalent when ethylene, produced by senescent vegetation, is reduced or absent. Management decisions that stimulate rates of nitrification – the conversion of ammonium to nitrates – such as excessive use of nitrogenous fertiliser, or excessive removal of plants by overgrazing urgently, need to be modified and improved. References are available. See also ‘Change needed in fertiliser use’ by John O’Connor and other articles at www.kiwifertiliser.co.nz and www.siddc.org.nz/soil-nutrient-management-project