“Replacing chemicals with fungi and bacteria reduces costs, improves food nutrition and automatically enables farmers and producers to better manage environmental concerns. With climate market changes, people are being encouraged to intensify production and through the current model there are some accumulative bad practices that are getting worse.”
He’s talking about the reliance on artificial and chemical fertilisers.
“Some of those chemicals used in an intensive way are causing environmental problems, which in turn become human problems, like nitrate levels in the water is probably the worst thing affecting New Zealand at the moment.”
He’s travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand doing trials with everything from dairy farms to kiwifruit.
“The last four years of trials are showing better yield year on year. We have all been blown away by the results,” says Dugald.
“Soil biology multiplies with age so it is great to get yield data to show that in a curve.”
One of those he is working alongside is the MIL Māori Investment owned organic Zespri gold kiwifruit orchard Whiritoa in Te Teko who are one of three finalists in the Ahuwhenua Trophy excellence in Māori horticulture awards.
“At Te Teko, our soil tests show up to 88kg of approximate release of nitrogen by soil bio mass per hectare per month, using a Solvita and Henry Brinton Respiration Test,” says Dugald.
At the heart of it all is nitrogen.
“Nitrogen is crucial to soil-based production and income. It increases plant performance growth and ultimately yield. Our atmosphere is very rich in nitrogen so it is very easy to use bacteria to alter and transfer that into plant available nitrogen in the soil.”
He says that soil life can grow or replace a lot of its own nutrients on a consistent basis in cropping, horticulture, pastural and forestry, unlocks a huge potential for growers and a large reduction in pending compliance costs.
One of the biggest challenges he faces is that growers believe that synthetic chemical fertilisers have to be applied repeatedly.
“Unlearning is of the same importance as learning because to unlearn something is to be conscious of what we have learnt and our ability to change it,” says Dugald.
Trial results have been revealing for some growers.
“Showing farmers who have been on their same piece of land for many years that by changing the way they grow in those areas we can bring those soils back has been great.”
One of the biggest surprises came on a dairy farm trial block where the fungus travelled between two treated sites in an unexpected time frame.
“The fungus crossed 10-metre buffer zones around the two trials in less than six weeks. None of us expected that. It means our soils that have been depleted by natural soil fungus over years of intensive farming can be rehabilitated in just weeks.
“That is very encouraging for farmers.”
Farmers get a gumboot view of what can be achieved when they see treated and untreated areas side by side on their farms.
At one Central Hawke’s Bay dairy farm, cows that are grazing in paddocks that have been treated with the fungus and bacteria are producing up to two litres more milk a day.
“When you have 600 cows producing more than two litres extra a day, that’s 1200 litres a day extra with no fertiliser costs.
“Because we are talking about a live product, over time it multiplies so grows exponentially. We are not spreading a chemical granule that dissolves, we are installing a living network that multiplies.”
With such positive feedback, he feels a corner has been turned.
“The feedback is huge, with every single one (of them) wanting to do more. So, we are now navigating scale and what that looks like,” he says.
The more industries they work with, the more people come knocking on the door — including some from offshore.
Quite startling 'no one else in the world doing the same thing as we are'
He is working closely with iwi in Taupō who are keen to move away from the use of chemical fertilisers into a more environmentally friendly space.
“They view their land holdings as (being) ‘forever’ and make decisions (with that view in mind). It is inspirational to work alongside that sort of mindset, where their strategies and management is light years ahead of many.”
Locally, they have been working with tomato and sweetcorn crops as well as native tree trials where over a 12-month period they have seen a 38 percent increase in manuka growth.
Dugald has patents in Australia, the United States and Russia as well as in New Zealand.
“It’s quite startling that there is no one else in the world doing the same thing as we are with live culture,” he says.
He is in talks with offshore industries and is thankful that some of his trial partners in New Zealand are internationally connected.
“Every plant or tree has its own specific requirement of soil biology and what Respond does is match blueberry plants with blueberry preference of biology, pine trees with pine tree biology and so on.
“That is where our real speciality lies in matching trees and plants with their perfect biology. It has taken me 30 years to be able to find all this out. There is no text book or road map, but it is a real common-sense-based approach.”
New machinery has also been developed, including a new pasture drill, which plants both the seed and biology in the ground at the same time, reducing the costs and increasing area covered in the same time frame.
Dugald says the driving philosophy is to change the way things are grown.
“Our aim is higher nutrient production with lower environment contamination which helps with water quality and grower prosperity, and at a time when weather is playing a larger role. Change can become a positive tool.
“We aren’t trying to get people to grow things completely differently but if they stop using fertilisers and start concentrating on soil quality and soil health, then that living part of their farm is going to work for them rather than against them.”
