FARM PRODUCTION
NEED FOR FERTILISERS A VITAL FACTOR. MANUFACTURE OF SUPER. In the task of maintaining production from the farm lands of the Dominion, the manufacturers of artificial fertilisers play a vitally important part. It can be said that without the assistance rendered by the fertiliser industry, it would have been utterly impossible for agriculturists to have reached the present high level of production of butterfat, meat or wool, and it can just as truthfully be said that without the continued support of that industry, present-day production levels cannot be maintained. In the North Island of New Zealand there are many hundreds of thousands of acres of land that, in their natural condition, were too poor for successful farming, but which, with the assistance of superphosphate, are today producing almost unbelievable quantities of primary products. It is a significant fact that the highest per acre yields of butterfat or fat lambs are now being obtained from land that a quarter of a century ago was considered useless for carrying live stock. The secret of the transformation is superphosphate, the manufacture of which is one of our key industries today. REPLACING THE LOSSES. Every ton of the 500,000 tons of primary products that leave our shores, contains known quantities of some dozen or more mineral substances that have been taken from the land. If the whole of our yearly harvest of dairy produce, meat, wool, fruit, etc., was consumed in this country, there would not be the same loss of fertility from the land, but when most of this is shipped overseas it follows that the loss is complete and must sooner or later be replaced otherwise some of our land would soon go out of production. No more striking instance of the loss of natural fertility could be found within this Dominion than that supplied by the original bush-clad, hill country on the East Coast of the North Island. The original settlers felled and burnt the bush and sowed grass seed on the ashes of the burn. For some years afterwards this country carried very large numbers of sheep, in many cases up to three breeding ewes per acre. The land was clean and new and the burning of heavy bush had released the accumulated stores of calcium, phosphates and potash contained within the trees and made these available to the pastures which followed and through the pastures to the stock. Animals of all kinds did well on this newly-won grazing land and the East Coast soon came to be looked upon as the grazier’s paradise. Thirty years later the East Coast presents an altogether different picture. As a result of continuous grazing and disposal of sheep and cattle, the original fertility has gradually been transferred to other parts until now we have a large area of country depleted and unproductive. Where the best of English grasses and clover once held sway, we now find Danthonia, Brown Top, fern and manuka; where once three good sheep per acre were carried easily, we now find one or one and a-half poorer ones; where once fat lambs and fat wethers were the rule, we now find store conditioned stock only, and that change has taken place in the lifetime of the original settlers. PHOSPHATE DEFICIENCY. There must be a reason for this retrogression. Research and experience put it down to a depletion of the mineral elements, phosphate and calcium. In the absence of a sufficiency of these essential minerals, the better-class pasture species fail to grow on and stock go short of necessary bonebuilding food. It is not possible for the farmer or run-holder to produce his own supplies of phosphate and, except in a very few isolated cases, calcium; he is entirely dependent upon outside sources of supply. It does not matter how .capably any given piece of land is managed; it matters little what the season climatic conditions may be; if that land is going to be built up to, and maintained at, a high standard of production, it must be assisted with outside supplies of phosphate and lime. Although there are some areas within the Dominion where the natural supplies of phosphate are more adequate than in others, there is really no land in present occupation where the available phosphates are adequate to maintain a high level of production; in many cases serious phosphate deficiency exists.
MAKING PHOSPHATES AVAILABLE. It is the particular function of the fertiliser manufacturer to make available to farmers an adequate supply of essential plant foods, especially phosphate. The manufacturer of fertilisers must work in the closest co-opera-tion with the soil scientist, research workers, experimental farms and practical farmers; he must find out from the soil scientist and the research worker just what any particular soil is most in need of and then through the experimental farm he finds the best method of application. Primary production is essentially a co-operative effort with the farmer at one end of the line, the fertiliser manufacturer at the other and the scientific workers in between. Having established the fact that a phosphate deficiency is common to prac-
tically every soil type found in the Dominion, science set to work to find out the most efficient sort of phosphate to use, and it/ did not take long to \prove that for .our varied conditions of soil, climate and crops, superphosphate was the outstandingly successful form. It was not put to the manufacturer of fertilisers to produce super in sufficient quantity and of such a quality and physical condition as to meet the rapidly-growing requirements of an enormous primary industry. SUPER PRODUCTION. Nauru and Ocean Islands in the Pacific are the source of supply of phosphate rock from which New Zealand manufacturers produce super. If it were merely a matter of supplying raw phosphates to the land to make good the annual exodus of this element, then the application of finelyground phosphate rock would seem to be the correct procedure, but that does not work out satisfactorily. The natural phosphate is almost insoluble in the soil owing to the fact that the phosphate is in combination with other minerals. Plants take up their food in solution, therefore the added phosphate must be in such a chemical condition that it goes quickly into solution, This chemical condition is brought about by treating the natural phosphate rock with sulphuric acid and that treatment is distinctly an elaborate factory process. New Zealand farmers use close to half a million tons of superphosphate annually and to make this quantity available is a whole-time job for some eight manufacturing units situated at strategic points in the North and South Islands. Without this seemingly enormous quantity of super, the land in the Dominion would fail to meet the demands made upon it, production would fall away and our national income would be seriously curtailed. Superphosphate and its companion ele-ment-lime —together make possible our huge exports from the land and the production of these aids to fertility is indeed a key industry in New Zealand,
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 June 1938, Page 9
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1,168FARM PRODUCTION Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 June 1938, Page 9
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