Farmers should compare fertiliser

Recently a farmer had contacted me boasting he had just applied a fine prilled lime product at 250kg/ha which he was told by the company selling it was the equivalent of applying 2.5 tonne/ha of standard agricultural lime and how this had saved him a whole lot of money on cartage and spreading costs.

I asked him how much per tonne it had cost, which was around $300/tonne, and then informed him he had just applied a very expensive form of lime. Fine ground lime may work faster than normal lime, but it has no greater calcium carbonate content and once it is ‘spent’ it is spent, so will need to be applied a lot more regularly to maintain soil pH than standard ag lime.

Normal lime costs between $16/tonne and $30/tonne, depending on source, and so long as it is ground down to the standard fineness recommended by the Lime Millers Association, will start working within a few months and keep working for several years, as the finer particles dissolve quicker and coarser particles dissolve slower.

Aerial limes

An on-farm trial using standard Ravensdown Supreme lime showed visual responses within weeks after being applied. Sometimes during busy times, lime quarries do not take time out to maintain their crushers, rollers and screens and consequently some lime is sold that is too coarse, which may take many years to work.

Also for some aerial limes, some companies have included a 3mm chip to help it flow. Ideally, lime should be less than 60 microns or 0.6 mm, and the old standards used to be that at least 55 per cent had to pass through a 0.5mm screen and 95 per cent through a 2mm screen.

At this year’s Fertiliser and Lime Research Centre conference at Massey University I took a senior Ravensdown staff member to task for selling their substandard BG4 Reactive Phosphate Rock rebranded as Direct Application Phosphate Rock, which he did not dispute would take 20-30 years to fully work. His response was: “If farmers want it, we will sell it to them”. I told him this was not good enough, because farmers are buying such a product in ignorance.

Decades to work

Shareholders can go online to the Ravensdown website and look under phosphate fertilisers and see superphosphate at nine per cent P priced at $319/tonne and DAPR at 13 per cent P at $349/tonne, so for an extra $30 a farmer thinks he is buying over 40 per cent more phosphate – at 35 per cent cheaper per unit of P – not realising it will take decades to fully work.

Ballance is selling this same product but getting farmers to sign disclaimer/waiver forms since it falls outside of the specs for being a true RPR. I doubt whether their reps are informing their customers it could take 20-30 years to fully work because no farmer in their right mind should be using such a product. However, I do know some reps will not sell this product.

Last month I had a client who wanted to apply a capital application of phosphate to get their P levels closer to biological optimum, and had their local rep price up superphosphate and asked me what I thought. I informed them they could save tens of thousands of dollars getting a blend of triple super and sulphur from a private importer.

As the co-operative did not want to lose business a more senior staff member contacted them and tried to sell them BG4, informing them it was 26-28 per cent citric soluble P, since this could be competitively priced per unit of P against this cheaper triple super. I told them not to waste their money if they wanted to get their P levels up quickly and not wait 20-30 years for it to fully work.

Significantly cheaper

Currently, there are a number of private companies I know selling fertiliser products in the upper North Island significantly cheaper than the two big co-operatives – Zealyn, Fertilisers Direct, Fert Direct, Landco, Farmex, Dickey Direct, Fert Wholesale Direct and another couple, which will be bringing in products next spring.

For instance, there are three companies currently selling DAP for between $60-$120/tonne – or nine-18 per cent – cheaper than the co-ops. Two companies are selling triple super for about $180/tonne – or 25 per cent – cheaper. Four companies selling sulphate of ammonia for $50-$145/tonne – or 10-30 per cent – cheaper. And one company selling urea for $70/tonne – or 15 per cent – cheaper.

One tactic the co-ops use to try and dissuade clients from using such products is saying these products are not up to the same standard as theirs, which is ironic because some of their own products fall well short of the bar like BG4.

All of these importers, as far as I am aware, get each shipment tested before it leaves the country of origin and also tested here in NZ as soon as it arrives, and openly inform farmers if it is substandard. Last year one importer of feed grade high analysis Dicalcium phosphate, 18 per cent P, was duped by a rogue trader from China who imported a shipment that upon arrival was tested and turned out to be a kieserite, magnesium sulphate, type product with only one per cent P.

Needless to say the importer took a considerable financial hit on this, and sold the kieserite at a considerable loss. I had several clients who bought some of this cheap kieserite for their pasture and maize crops for less than one-third the co-ops were selling kieserite for.

Robin Boom, CPAg, member of the Institute of Professional Soil Scientists

Ravensdown and Ballance were invited to respond to this column but declined to do so.

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