Knowledge is power

...it may be a trite saying but nonetheless true when it comes to assessing farm-spend in these fairly tight times with drought, the high dollar and unpredictable returns all having an effect on decision-making.

With fertiliser remaining one of the most significant onfarm costs it can only make sense to "know" what nutrients are required and where on the farm they should be applied for best economic return. As well, to complete a nutrient budget and create a nutrient management plan, soil test inputs from a robust sampling regime are required.

The cost of soil testing is still very small in comparison to the cost of fertiliser; or lost production by inadequate fertiliser application. A regular soil test programme together with good record-keeping to gain a picture of whether the farm fertility is decreasing, increasing or remaining constant will provide huge value. It would be ill-advised to sample fewer paddocks or to combine more paddocks into a sampling "block" to save money on soil testing, as variation across a farm (and indeed within paddocks) can be extremely high. Rather, by including more paddocks in the sampling programme a much clearer picture of the nutrient variability can be obtained – and therefore much wiser decisions made on how to manage those nutrients.

This farm variation underpins the development of a new service from Hill Laboratories – All Paddock Testing (APT) as described in our last newsletter. By sampling nearly all the paddocks on a farm, a graphical presentation of nutrients measured is provided; showing the fertility status and also those paddocks with potential for environmental risk. The APT service is intended as a benchmark of farm fertility and offers discounted testing due to the numbers of samples submitted per farm. During development of the APT service, a trial was carried out on Murray Jagger's Manaia Farm in Northland, sampling 88 paddocks. Table 1 shows the range of test values obtained for each nutrient.

Table 1: Soil test concentration range and average for the 88 paddocks tested on the Northland dairy farm.

Soil Test	Range	Average
Olsen P (mg/L)	13-74	42
Phosphate Retention (%)	9-70	29
pH	5.2-6.7	6.0
Total S (mg/kg)	669-1900	1006
MAFK	5-22	11
MAFMg	22-68	42

Sampling by 'monitoring block' would have masked this variation – optimisation of fertiliser was made possible by using the knowledge from testing more paddocks. This certainly gives more power to fertiliser advisors and farmers alike – better testing with better results.

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