Sustainable Farming
Fertiliser Research Project
On the 4th of April 2012, 30 people gathered in the Koru Room of the Rotorua Club in what soon will be considered a historical event.
The room was filled with the directors and field representatives from many of New Zealand's Biological and Organic Fertiliser supply and consultancy firms. The meeting was convened by Tom Walters, Executive Member of Te Arawa Federation of Maori Authorities, Rotorua Lakes and Land Trust and a director of the Maori Research Institute.
The agenda of the meeting was to establish how New Zealand farmers can return their farm management and farming systems to a format which can lead to clean water and healthy soils. Maori's inter-generational strategy of at least a hundred years was placed as a foundation value of the discussion.
How can New Zealand's farming methods change
to produce an end consumer product which has real nutritional quality
and sustain itself for the generations to come?
How can Maori Land managers, Maori Owned horticultural and agricultural producers, and Maori Leaders
establish a way forward
to achieve CLEAN WATER and HEALTHY SOILS
for all the generations to come?
There are many studies underway in New Zealand and around the world which tap dance around the most basic of questions. How can we get it right? The answer which keeps surfacing to the top is that there must be a return to the reestablishment of a healthy soil base, balanced, and geared for sustainable production, not just for a year or 10, but for hundreds of years.
Many studies look at ways to add more chemicals, altered chemicals to improve their singular end product result. The consensus of this and many other meetings is that this has been tried and the result from all documented accounts is that the fertiliser systems which have singular mechanism instead of a balance mechanism approach results in poisoned land, water and air and food. There are many studies which highlight the unnatural and damaging levels of toxins and nitrates in our water supplies and soils. Nutrient leeching and top soil erosion are devastating our planet.
Through the Maori Research Institute, the Te Arawa FoMA Executive are setting into motion a farm trial program for the next 3 to 5 years, giving firms with a healthy soil philosophy an opportunity to prove they are right. It is not about one firm over the other. It is about giving proof in the results for the public to decide for themselves.
