Mike calls time on 55-year career
When your father’s the branch manager with the nickname of ‘‘Sulphur Jack’’ and you’re a straight-out-of school 15 year old starting work with that same fertiliser company, then you have a lot to live up to.
That fact probably didn’t faze 15-year-old sales cadet Mike Davey when he joined the New Plymouth branch of Farmers Fertiliser in 1965.
Perhaps the one consoling factor, he recalls, was that his dad was not to be his immediate boss.
Fast forward 55 years and Davey has reached another milestone. He will retire on March 31 from his role as Western North Island manager for Ravensdown, which acquired Farmers Fertiliser in 1997.
‘‘But I can still remember the advice my dad gave me on the day I started work,’’ he recalls. ‘‘My father told me that when I entered the site gate at Farmers Fertiliser our relationship would cease. And it did. Over time, however, I won the confidence of the people around me.’’
A twin and one of a family of nine, Davey was the only one among his siblings to follow his dad into the fertiliser industry.
‘‘As a child I spent a lot of time with my dad at the Farmers Fertiliser plant climbing heaps of phosphate rock which used to be stored out there. There was no such thing as Health and Safety in those days,’’ he says.
‘‘I enjoyed machinery and farming in particular. My wife’s grandparents were farmers in South Taranaki and I spent quite a bit of time with them. I should have gone dairying, I suppose, but I spent a lot of time playing football at Francis Douglas College and left it too late.’’
The fertiliser industry in the
1960s was strictly governed, especially in terms of prices, recalls Davey.
‘‘Trade and Industry set the price for superphosphate. This eliminated competition really because whatever the price was in New Plymouth, it would be the same in Whanganui where our nearest competition was.
‘‘We handled mainly superphosphate and potash in those days but 50 per cent of the product was sold in bags. These were one hundredweight bags;
20 to the tonne. This was because many of the Taranaki dairy farms were small by today’s standards – 100 cow farms in many cases – and many of the farmers used hoppers to spread their own fertiliser.
Phosphate brought into New Zealand was shipped from three main sources: Nauru Island, Christmas Island and Makatea Island, recalls Davey.
The mining rights to extract and export the phosphate was held by the all-powerful British Phosphate Commission.
‘‘Those islands were very rich in high-grade phosphate. During World War 2, Farmers Fertiliser imported phosphate from all three islands, and had large stockpiles of it to guarantee continuity of supply to our farmers. ‘‘We still bring small shipments of phosphate in from Nauru. Its value is in its high cadmian content. We blend this with lower cadmian rocks which come from Togo, Morocco, Vietnam and formerly China.’’
In terms of both product development and related technology, the fertiliser industry has been continually evolving, says Davey.
In 1969, the New Plymouth branch of Farmers Fertiliser became the first in New Zealand to produce granulated fertiliser , which offered huge advantages to both those who handled the product and the farmer clients who bought it.
‘‘Superphosphate was a dusty, powdered product and, obviously, if you dropped it from an aircraft it could drift for miles, which was great for neighbouring farmers but irritating for the farmer who had to pay for it!’’ says Davey.
‘‘Then they started using granulated superphosphate which had been processed by a technology taken from overseas. This took out 70-80 per cent of the dust component, and meant much more accurate placement either in ground spreading or aerial topdressing.’’
Ground positioning satellite placement of fertiliser has also had a huge impact on the accuracy of its application, a godsend to farmers and ground-spread operators alike in an era where the impact on the environment is being closely monitored.
‘‘This enables precision placement over an area which has been previously mapped by a hawk-eye mapping programme,’’ explains Davey.
‘‘This takes in exclusion zones such as waterways and wetlands, where fertiliser is not allowed to be placed.
‘‘On completion of the spreading, the farmer is given a ‘proof of placement’ map which can be shown to any regional authority such as the Taranaki Regional Council if required.’’