Hills, airplanes, and farming
We will go to an area where we want to develop more business. Advertise the meeting and call our regular clients and hope for a few more farmers to explain what we do.
It is a wonderful way for me to see the country,
We have Beef Cattle and Sheep farms and the main diet for these animals is grass.
The topography of many of these farms is on the side of a mountain. When we prescribe a fertilizer, it will be applied to the farm by an airplane. It is a remarkable process to watch. The airstrip will be flat area of grass probably on a mountainside someplace near the farm. The fertiliser will be delivered by a truck to the airstrip. The loader is a truck that can go on the highway but when it gets to the loading site the loader is built on the back of the truck so the driver then changes seats so he can see what he is doing.
The loader has a regular loader bucket but is equipped with a scale so the load in the bucket can be weighed. Then the loader is positioned over the top of a hole in the Airplane and the powdered ground rock is poured into the plane.
The modern fertiliser plane will carry 3 tons at a time. (NZ spells fertiliser with an s) The plane is equipped with a GPS system so the pilot is guided to the correct pass and flies over the area to dump the load. It is a remarkable system and is very precise and efficient and can cover an area that could never be reached by any vehicle.
The soil in many areas is short of some trace minerals so when these elements are added to the fertiliser the resulting grass has a much better chance to make the animal have a better diet. We can change the amount of gain per day in grazing animal by a significant amount so of course it is all connected to animal health and profit for the farmer.
Most of New Zealand is mountains so the Beef and Sheep farmer harvests the grass on the hills with animals. The dairies are usually located on hills that are not that steep but many are still to steep for a vehicle to spread so the plane can serve them.
Peter said if we would take a big rolling pin and flatten the earth out then NZ would be as big as Australia.
It is a fun place to visit and I am having the time of my life.
Bob Scott
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