We don’t starve our animals, so why do we starve our soils, at a time when we need
them to feed a population growth of 2.2%
per annum??
At present the world is not able to feed its people, as almost one billion of them go to bed hungry each night. This is a sad but true fact. The population of the world currently stands at
7 billion and by 2050 it is estimated that it will have risen to 9billion. If we are struggling to nourish people at present,
how are we going to manage come 2050 if we don’t correct
the nutrient depletion of our soils?
We have huge potential in our small but highly productive landscape to increase food production, provided we become more efficient and care for our soils.
Our Precious Soils:
Look at what we are doing to them!!
National sales of N,P & K have fallen dramatically since 1995 in Ireland.
It’s easy to figure out whats happening: we are taking away huge yields, but we’re not replacing what we are taking away.
Traditionally 0-7-30 was applied to silage ground in the Autumn and you topped up in Spring with a high-N compound. This seems to be all history and thus we have arrived at very low soil indices in the majority of tillage & silage fields.
Research has proved that low soil phosphorus levels can cost farms an average loss of 1.5tonne of DM per hectare, which at current feed prices equates to 400 euro per year.
We have become hugely reliant on slurry and dung, but we don’t realize that most of the nutrients in feed are used by the animal for weight gain and maintenance. We are led to believe that slurry from animals on concentrates, has to be very high
in P & K, but this is only partially true, as 1tonne of barley contains 3.35kg of phosphorus, and every 100kg of liveweight gain uses up 1kg of this phosphorus. A lot of our slurry is now stored in lagoons and outdoor tanks, where at the slurry is exposed to at least 1500mm of rainfall annually, therefore diluting its value.

Target Fertilisers – The Secret behind MEGA yields!!
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Custom Blended Bulk Fertilisers
Deliver the exact amount of N, P, K you require
No more & No less, Makes sense & Saves money

Full Nutrient Advice &
Soil Testing service provided
Remember the bumper cereal yields of 2011, this means we need to put back even more than normal.

All grassland should now be part of the grazing platform, and any remaining grass for conservation should be removed as soon as possible. Start building grass cover so stock you intend to carry can be kept out for as long as possible. Before Sept 15^th, provided you are within your nitrates limits, the grazing platform should be blanket covered with a bag of CAN, in order to create a good bank of grass to prolong the grazing season as long as possible.

We recently analysed some crusher dust from Loughnanes Quarry in Birr, and we found that it has 50% the value of normal ground limestone. This means that you just have to double the normal rate to get your desired p.H. It is priced very well at 7.50euro per tonne ex-quarry. We are very pleased with this finding as it provides us with a local source of lime.

Lime is essential in order to make nutrients available. The optimum soil p.H for grassland is 6.3, but the average soil p.H of Irish mineral soils is only 5.4.

We can now offer a very nice CAN + Sulphur granule (27.5% N + 7% S). It is a CCF (Complete compound fertilizer) which means that the sulphur is contained in the nitrogen granule. According to users it is ideal for spreading in wide tramlines.