Greenpeace targets fertiliser companies

Time was when fertiliser companies’ main worries were farmers grumpy over the prices they had to pay, or critics who charged that their more expensive products were a waste of money.

But now Ballance Agrinutrients and Ravensdown are coming under increasing scrutiny from human rights and green groups.

Two years ago the Polisario Front took out a court order in South Africa to claim a shipment of phosphate destined for Ballance, but which it said belonged to the people of the Western Sahara. It subsequently won the case and took ownership of the US$5 million cargo.

Now the two companies, with a combined turnover of $1.5 billion, are being accused by Greenpeace of polluting rivers. Large billboards in prominent spots around the country with the hashtag #Toomanycows are the first salvo in a new campaign.

The purpose? To ban the sale and use of chemical nitrogen, which Greenpeace says has fuelled the rise of dairy cow numbers over the past three decades and led to polluted waterways.

Statistics NZ figures show between 1994 and 2017 the national dairy herd nearly doubled in size, from 3.8 million to 6.4 million.

At the same time synthetic nitrogen use has risen from 4.25 million kilograms a year to 25.38 million kgs and the estimated amount of nitrogen leached into soil from agriculture has increased 29 per cent.

In the 2015 Environment Aotearoa report co-authored by Statistics NZ and the Ministry for the Environment, they said the leaching increase ‘‘was mainly due to increases in dairy cattle numbers [and therefore urine, which contains nitrogen] and nitrogen fertiliser use’’. ‘‘The largest sources of nitrate leaching are dairy farming, sheep and directly from nitrogen fertiliser – in that order – but the point is it’s inextricably linked to the explosion in cow numbers,’’ Greenpeace agriculture campaigner Gen Toop said. ‘‘Since the 1990s dairy numbers have nearly doubled and the use of synthetic nitrogen has risen seven-fold. Out of all OECD countries New Zealand has had the highest increase.’’

Representatives from the fertiliser companies have met with Greenpeace following the launch of the campaign last month. A spokesman for Ballance said the company did not want to respond through the media to the demands.

Toop said while ‘‘[the companies] had a lot of nice things to say, the reality is the amount of synthetic nitrogen is increasing’’.

But soil scientist Dr Doug Edmeades, who takes the fertiliser companies to task for selling farmers more expensive ‘‘smart’’ fertilisers, which he says they do not need, defends them against Greenpeace’s claims. ‘‘They [Greenpeace] show an appalling lack of knowledge about pastoral farming. Most nitrogen leaching comes from a cow’s urine patch.’’

Edmeades said there was three times as much nitrogen from natural sources such as clover, as there was from chemical nitrogen.

He said he did not deny there was water pollution from nitrate leaching, but questioned whether a ban on or reducing cow numbers was the answer.

‘‘Reducing stock rate is one solution to the problem but will not work if the fewer animals simply process more feed and hence nitrogen losses are not affected. Calling for a ban of fertiliser nitrogen will not solve the problem because if this were done more clover would grow and hence the amount of nitrogen in the environment will not decline,’’ Edmeades said.

He said he had faith in better technologies such as nitrate inhibitors, feed-off pads, and herd homes – ‘‘anywhere you can collect the urine and put it back on the land at the rate the land can cope with’’.

Toop responded that she didn’t live in a ‘‘technological fantasy world’’, that there were no fixes which were working, and that the country needed to reduce cow numbers.