Strategic and Operational Frameworks for Pastoral Soil Sustainability and Nutrient Budgets
Ian Boddy, AgResearch Ruakura, Hamilton
Introduction
Currently, the area of sustainable management of the environment is one attracting huge interest both in New Zealand and internationally. Monitoring at environmental indicators is crucial in the area of sustainable management to identify environmental issues of concern.
It is clear that nutrient budgets (N, P, K, S) are being used internationally as one of the indicators of soil sustainability. While some work has been done in the area of nutrient budgets in New Zealand (see R E white - The Soil Factor in Sustainable agriculture in New Zealand published in The Proceedings of the International Conference on Sustainable Land Management 1991). There is no current up-to-date method available for rapidly constructing nutrient budgets at a farm, regional or national level.
Structural Framework
We perceive that a structural level all stakeholders have clear yet individual requirements. Thus, at the national level the Ministry for the Environment requires that a set of environmental indicators be defined that are aligned to a specific resource are sector based and allow reporting at all levels.
Farmers require a list of sector aligned indicators coupled with a system which is both voluntary and user pays.
AgResearch by virtue of its past history in the pastoral area can offer a very sector aligned system. We currently have by way of the Soil Fertility Service an infrastructure in place for generating and reporting on farm data. This service which we plan to enlarge upon, currently generates data on chemical indicators only, although other tests are in development and will be included in the Soil Fertility Service soon. The proposed system will be voluntary and based on a user pays basis. The Soil Fertility Service can be used to develop the technology required. This technology will then be made available to other analytical laboratories.
System/Process for Pastoral Sector
Clearly it is vital to define those indicators which are required to give a meaningful measure of soil sustainability.
This fits in with the MfE policy and hopefully can be done in conjunction with other interested parties.
AgResearch is currently engaged in research to determine suitable indicators for soil sustainability.
Once defined, an appropriate system for sampling for these indicators will need to be developed. Along with these sampling protocols, standards and experimental viability will need to be investigated to ensure that test results are meaningful. We are currently working in this area.
Laboratory testing is currently carried out by a number of analytical service organisations. Any new testing will require the analytical protocols are suitable for use with a large number of samples providing a quick turnaround time to the user. Testing then provides a supply of farm data which can be fed back to the user and potentially captured at a national level via a national database.
This proposed system will take some considerable time to put in place. However the database described can in the interim be used to collect other nutrient data from fertiliser industry and producer board sources. Thus providing the means to calculate a coarse level of nutrient budgets.
It is this latter case which is the MAF Policy project. The objective of this work is to develop the systems necessary to capture, record and report on nutrient budgets and other soil indicators at tile farm, catchment, regional and national levels for the pastoral sector.
We plan to work very closely with NZFMRA, MfE, MAFPol and Federated Farmers and preliminary discussions have already taken place.
The obvious outcome from the system as described, is the development of Best Management Practises (BMPs) for aspects of pastoral agriculture. The fertiliser industry is very supportive of this and we are actively pursuing this idea with them. Once developed, we hope to use a workbook (or similar) to facilitate farmer participation in data collection. This data will allow the farmer to monitor the sustainability of his own farm and if collated through a central database, in an anonymous fashion, will serve as the basis for reporting back to stakeholders.
Possible Indicators
It is important to remember that at this point in time there is no definitive list of indicators for soil sustainability. However, it is likely that once defined, they will include nutrient budgets, as well as chemical, physical and biochemical tests.
Nutrient budgets will be calculated using Outlook™, a programme developed by AgResearch which offers predictive calculations at farm level. It ought to be possible to also use Outlook™ or a modified version to calculate nutrient budgets at a more coarse level using input and output data from the fertilise and producer industries.
AgResearch has made a major commitment to developing and calibrating indicators for pastoral soils. The research towards developing simple diagnostic tests for soil physical attributes is well advanced (in progress four years). Work on calibrating bio-indicators has commenced this year (July 1995). These tests, once calibrated, together with the standard soil chemical tests, will form the basis for objectively measuring the sustainability of pastoral soils.
Thus we feel that we have at our disposal all die necessary expertise to be able to complete the MAF Policy project within one year of commencing.
Contact for Enquiries
MAF Information Services
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526
Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
Fax: +64 4 894 0721
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