We currently have 7 forage grass varieties in test programs in various provincial, state, university and federal jurisdictions across Canada and the USA.
We've been doing this for 20 years and the grasses have been under development for nearly 40 years.
It's like herding cats.
There is no real standard for such tests and results can vary wildly from year to year. There are more variables than you can imagine. Weather, soil preparation and consistency, field maintenance and treatments applied, skill of the people involved etc.
If I was asked for my opinion on field testing by Verde Potash, I'd recommend that they setup a large, skilled and connected test program management team, and work with the larger commercial producers in South America.
A commercial producer has financial motivation to improve production. Good to see Verde involved in many commercial tests this early in their development.
Universities, provincial, state and federal test programs are fine, but the profit factor is not present, so the diligence and attention to detail required is not always present in the execution of the testing.
That said, I would also recommend that they participate in as many govt and educational institutional testing programs as possible, as these can often influence farmers more than commercial test programs. They just need to find a balance between being overbearing and cooperative while ensuring the relevance of the testing.
Farmers are hard to move in a new direction and tend to go with what is proven. Who can blame them? However if they see or hear of large commercial operations making huge loot off a fertilizer strategy change, they will pay attendion.
When my father asked me why AMZ dropped so hard on Thurs I showed him the NR. He's 78 and mostly fishing or reading about fishing LOL.
His first comment was roughly, well if they'd applied powdered thermopotash to the carrots and they were "burned" out of the field on accelerated nutrient uptake, we'd have dropped a whole lot more.
He's got an MA from the University of Wales in forage crop management/soil chemistry and has spent over 30 years, in Wales, Manitoba and BC, working directly with farmers to improve crop and livestock production.
He figures that thermopotash will work just fine, and as advertised.
We have an acreage on the shore of a small lake on Van Isle which gets algae bloom every summer from the field runoff from the neighboring dairy farm. It's full of decent size trout but we can't eat them because of the pollution.
So there is yet another reason for using a fert that does not leach out immediately with rain.
I figure he'd be willing to give the farmer next door free TP, so he could just hop in the canoe and harvest trout on the fly LOL. |
