Alliance removes guesswork factor

Raymond Burr, John Palamountain and Brian Wilkinson are combining their skills.

Palamountains Nutrition, Massey University and Hawke's Bay's Quantum Laboratories are banding together to offer a new service to farmers.

Called QPM, it aims to provide all the essential elements to nourish soil, plants and animals on the land.

Quantum Laboratories will analyse soil and plant material and find out what's lacking. Massey University will test blood and faeces to determine what the animals need.

Once that information is in, Quantum Laboratories will design a fertiliser programme for the individual farm. Palamountains Nutrition, a Wanganui business that manufactures animal nutritional supplements, will provide the animals with what they need until soil additives have made those elements available to the animals through the plants they eat. The idea is to design farming systems that prevent disease, rather than treating disease and other problems after they arise.

"It's all about getting farmers farming preventively, rather than reactively," Quantum Laboratories managing director Raymond Burr says.

It should also take the guesswork out of farming and get away from the standardised approach of big fertiliser companies.

Professor Brian Wilkinson, from Massey University, met Burr and Palamountains Nutrition managing director John Palamountain in Wanganui to talk about the business. The three envisage 12 to 15 sales representatives offering their services to clients nationwide.

Palamountain says his family-owned company already makes feed supplements tailored to individual farms. It has products specifically for dairy cows, racehorses and companion animals.

The QPM approach to feeding soil, plants and animals can do more than make animals healthier and more profitable, they say. It also has the potential to reduce nitrogen leaching into waterways. The aim would be to apply only as much nitrogen as is needed - and waste as little as possible.

Landcare Research scientists are enthusiastic about the idea, the three men say, because nitrogen leaching is one of the main barriers to intensifying land use.

Palamountains Nutrition manufactures a feed supplement sold in 60 countries.