Subsidy On Fertiliser Suggested By Scientist

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29365, 18 November 1960, Page 27

Subsidy On Fertiliser Suggested By Scientist

(New Zealand "Press Association)

MJCKUJUO. Nov. 17. Sir Bruce Levy today suggested that national money vested in the New Zealand fertiliser industry would effectively bolster the basic source of the country’s wealth, its industrial life, and the social welfare of its people. He said, too, that as more difficult soil types were tackled, there might arise a desperate need for aid by way of a fertiliser subsidy in, at least, the initial stages of development.

Sir Bruce Levy was speaking at the opening of the annual conference of the Fertiliser Manufacturers’ Research Association, attended by company representatives from all over New Zealand and from Australia.

"It is just lunaacy,” he said “not to foster the fertiliser industry that alone can carry us forward towards the full development and full utilisation of our land and climate at a high soil fertility and high productive level.

I may be accused of glibness and fantasy in suggesting that the fertiliser industry double its present output of macro-minerals and include in a greater proportion of these more trace elements, insecticides, fungicides and weedicides.

“But, if New Zealand is to develop its full potential from grassland and use the facilities now available to distribute the manufactured fertiliser, an output of two million tons a year will be necessary within the next 50 years or less.” Sir Bruce Levy said the fertiliser industry, and research towards its expanding complicity and efficiency, was more than a commercial undertaking. “It is basic to our present-day prosperity,” he said, “and to the increasing prosperity in the future of all our people. Unless it expands towards the two million tons output annually, and possibly towards three million tons, our full potential from the land and our full prosperity as a people will never be attained. “Maybe, as we tackle more and more of the outposts of the country and the more difficult soil types closer in, there will arise a desperate need for aid by way of a fertiliser subsidy in at least the initial stages of development. “It is my considered opinion that such a fertiliser subsidy is warranted nationally as a price all must pay to ensure that our primary exports will keep pace with the ever-growing demands for imports by mechanical industry, by our standard of life and the ever-rising requirements of a cultured Welfare State. “All these things are desirable and possible, but the second million tons of fertiliser is an urgent national must.” Sir Bruce Levy said soil fertility building in New Zealand was akin to the physical stamina building of the race. Topdressin

with artificial fertilisers had set up an environment unequalled anywhere in the world for the world's best grasses and clovers, the world's best fodders and the world’s best stock.

Soil fertility building could unleash untold potentialities still latent so that New Zealand might ultimately become the nucleus stock herbage farm and the stud stock farm for at least the whole of the temperate zones of the world.

"Hie first million tons a year of mineral fertilisers has got us just so far,” he said. “Two million tons a year will not complete the task, but it will bring us a long way along the road to our objective. It may be that the third million tons will be necessary to complete the task.”