Top dressing pilot advocates chemical free

Chemical-free farming is the way to improve the nation's health, says an organic sheep and beef farmer. Farming is like flying, organic  sheep and beef farmer Chris  Donovan says. "It's 90%  planning to avoid the problems  that might lie ahead, and 10% sheer terror." He ought to know reports The Dom Post. As a topdressing pilot, he has had a few "hairy" incidents and has mourned the deaths of many of his aviator friends. As a farmer in the Koeke hills behind Taihape, he has put that experience to good use. He has cautiously felt his way towards fully fledged organic farming, but not without some frightening moments along the way. Mr Donovan's first-hand encounters with the damage caused by farmers applying too much of the wrong fertiliser steered him towards organics. He has seen the devastation of oversupply on thin West Australian soils, in rich Indonesian vegetable plantations and on Waikato dairy pastures - and on his own farm. He took over the family farm in the mid-1990s and began by continuing the conventional practice of fertilising and drenching. "Luckily, I couldn't afford to topdress the whole farm. The superphosphate killed the soil flora and the worm population went to zilch. But where I didn't use super, the soil was fine."The fertilised grass still grew but his stock performance hardly changed. Later, when he called in Waipawa consultant Peter Lester to analyse the soil and pasture, he discovered the grass lacked nutrients. Now a committed BioGro-certified organic farmer, he describes such grass as junk food.