El Niño Warning: NZ Farmers Urged to Plan Fert Early
Plan ahead and be patient. That’s the message to farmers and horticulturalists from the chairman of the NZ Agricultural Aviation Association, Kent Weir.
Dr Bert Quin (right) receiving his Life Membership of the NZ Soil Science Society late last year, for “Distinguished Service to Soil Science”.
Quinfert owner, Bert Quin says his autumn fertiliser sales are nearly double last year’s.
This is despite farmer difficulties with the extended drought and getting their stock processed, not to mention complications arising from COVID-19.
He claims this a clear sign that more and more farmers are seeing through the “disinformation campaign” about Quinfert’s Algerian RPR, touted as an environmentally protective fertiliser<.
“It has longed been ranked one of the very best RPR’s internationally, in all the internationally used tests, and even more importantly, in field trials”, Quin says.
“Putting the hard facts forward in regular print advertising has had a large role to play in this”.
Quin believes farmers are becoming increasingly cynical about what they are being told by their regular supplier.
“They have been told for decades that soluble P doesn’t get lost in significant amounts to the environment in runoff or leaching. Now, with Quinfert appearing on the scene with its true RPR, farmers are being offered a drilling super type product as the saviour for the environment because it has far lower P losses than superphosphate,” he adds.
“Farmers were also told that high-performance RPR had become very hard to get.”
But Quin says that Algerian RPR had been available all the time and was offered to the industry.
When Northland leather worker Vernon Suckling started making horse saddles 50 years ago, quad bikes and side-by-side vehicles were unheard of.
Alliance Group has confirmed that eligible farmer-shareholders who supply and continue to back the business will receive up to $20 million later this year, following the strategic investment partnership with Dawn Meats.
With a general election under five weeks away, Rural News is asking major political parties about their policies and positions on key issues facing the primary sector. We will run their responses to each question over the next four weeks. The ACT Party and the Greens didn't respond in time.
The red meat sector is in great heart.
Dr Scott Champion, Foundation for Arable Research chief executive, says that everyone in the supply chain had a role to play in driving the sector's long-term success.
Entries opened on Monday, 5 October 2026 for the 2027 New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards (NZDIA), which organisers describe as the nation's biggest celebration of excellence in the dairy sector.