Call For Funding For Trials Of Alternative Fertilisers On Farms Around Lakes

The time bomb of chemical leaching threatening Rotorua lakes and waterways can be worked through with alternative farming practices that not only maintain production but look after the environment according to fertiliser company Agrissentials.

Agrissentials General Manager Sam Bailey says farmers can farm their way through the problem by changing the way they treat their soil.

He says natural fertilisers encourage healthier levels of microbial activity in the soil that in turn capture and digests nitrates and phosphates holding them in the soil and preventing them from being leached.
The Government has pledged $144 million of which half is coming from local councils to deal with the problem.

He says part of that funding goes toward monitoring the problem which is almost surely just going to confirm it.

"Years will go by and we will have confirmed the problem through monitoring but not have solved anything. In the meantime farmers will be under pressure to stop farming, so everyone loses. Bailey says there are much more effective ways to be spending that kind of money without costing the farm.
"The solution is not hard; all it would require is for the Government and local authorities to divert some of that spend to running trials on alternative farming methods."
He says that would allow farmers to continue to be profitable and protect the environment at the same time. Changing the type of fertiliser being put on farms now will begin to stop the flow of toxic nutrient runoff into the lakes.

"Options like putting in nitrate walls are focusing on the wrong end of the problem. That is putting the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

"By using natural farming systems on farms surrounding waterways we can stop the problem at its source.
"We can bring the soil back to life which will revitalise the lakes and waterways.
At a recent Rotorua Lakes symposium Professor Erik Jeppesen of Denmark's National Environmental Research Institute said New Zealand should not repeat the mistakes his country made because there is a lot to clean up afterwards.
Professor Jeppesen said Denmark introduced measures such as fertiliser taxes and reducing stock density both of which would go along way to cleaning up waterways here.
However Bailey says that is all overkill when the solution is more readily at hand.