Whakatane Beacon

EDGECUMBE sharemilker David Law has increased his grass output by 26 per cent in five years– by walking away from urea.

“We started off using urea and growing 14 tonnes of dry matter per hectare – we’re now growing 17.7 tonnes,” he said.

“I’m growing more grass than I ever have.”

Part of a family with a strong farming tradition, as well as high-tech rotary milking shed and a biofuel tractor, Mr Law said he got into “biological farming” because he wanted to do better.

“... In relation to both outputs and the environment,” he said.

In an era where fuel and fertiliser prices were going up and up, new regulations for protecting streams and the environment in general had been introduced and emission trading schemes had become heated discussion points, Mr Law said some farmers were at their wits’ end.

“They ask what the heck is going on? What they should do?” he said.

“So I have to put my hand up and tell them ‘this is the future of farming’.”

Mr Law said his reason for switching methods was he did not like what urea was doing to the soil, and that he wanted to “be on top of the page” when it came to farming innovation.

“And now we have achieved that, even if adjustments are needed to perfect the system.”

By getting the biological farming right, the soil was conditioned to produce the natural nitrogen required to grow the grass – but the benefits did not end there.

“All the problems you get with your cows, mastitis, worms, bloat and eczema – they are determined by what’s in the soil,” Mr Law said.

“Worms and mastitis are directly related to the bugs in the ground, so if you increase the good bugs they suppress the bad bugs and you get a balance in the soil.”

With the roots of his grass reaching down 800 millimetres, Mr Law said water and aeration in the soil pretty much handled itself.

“Our farm used to get really muddy – now the water just filters through. We do not have to aerate – the microbes and the worms do it for us.”

Mr Law was using biological soil improvers developed by Peter Burton in Rotorua.

“I met him five years ago when I was looking for a replacement for urea,” he said.

Monitoring the developments on the Law farm over five years, Mr Burton had proved increased pasture production could be achieved without using nitrogen fertilisers.

“The key to the effectiveness of his products is the introduction of live fungi and bacteria,” Mr Law said.

Calcium was also introduced to the soil at levels higher than for conventional farming.

“Calcium is the driver of soil biology – and biology ultimately determines the quality and quantity of pasture growth.”

But while these improvements occur at grassroots level – quite literally – there were important considerations to the upper strata of politics as well.

“The Government’s emissions trading scheme doesn’t take the soil into account, but through biological farming, we actually take carbon out of the atmosphere,” Mr Law said.

Eco-Logic Soil Improvement owner Peter Burton said that contrary to what some scientists said, there did not appear to be a limit to the amount of carbon the soil could sequester when biological farming was used.

“Scientists, and the Kyoto Protocol, only tend to measure what happens in the few uppermost inches of soil, but with biological farming we build soil quality much deeper, and just keep building it,” Mr Burton said.

Farms that relied on nitrogen fertilisers did not sequester carbon.

“When we take nitrogen out of the equation we keep getting an annual increase in dry-matter produced – I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point of carbon-sequestering saturation. There’s no evidence of that.”

The more humus that was produced in the soil, the more the grass grew, the more carbon was taken out of the air.

“Pastoral farming done biologically acts as a cleanser.”

Mr Burton said New Zealand farmers were currently being made into scapegoats for carbon emissions, without any discrimination as to their practises.

“If legislation is passed that say pastoral farmers overall are polluters – then we have a problem,” he said.

National Party agriculture spokesman David Carter said he agreed fully with what Mr Law was doing.

“Even if the Kyoto Protocol isn’t adjusted to take carbon storage in the soil and grass into account, Mr Law’s methods will give us significant advantage versus the Kyoto Protocol,” he said.

That was because New Zealand was penalised under the protocol for using nitrogen fertilisers.

“Half of our greenhouse gasses come from farming; one third of that is related to nitrous oxide, and a portion of that is attributed to the use of nitrogen fertilisers.”

Upcoming adjustments to the Kyoto Protocol could possibly take the storage of carbon in grass and soil into account, Mr Carter said.

“A process of negotiation has already started, where all the signatory countries will try to fine-tune the rules, and some countries will argue we need to take a broader definition to the storage of carbon.”

In the meantime, Mr Law was “clearly disadvantaged” in relation to the protocol.

“Even if Mr Law’s soil-and-grass carbon storage isn’t taken into account, his way of farming improves our position in relation to the protocol,” Mr Carter said.

Mr Law pointed to the calculator available at the www.carbonfarming.org.nz website, where his 450 cows will land him with a $28,000 annual tax.

“And that’s at the lowest, proposed rate. Where’s the question about nitrogen fertilisers – where’s the incentive?” he said.

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