SPECIAL REPORT • FERTILISER TESTING
TESTING times Automation and improved soil tests are set to give farmers faster and more reliable analyses, as Anne Lee reports. Wet, heavy soil samples have to be manually pushed through a 12mm sieve before they’re dried.
R
avensdown’s Analytical Research Laboratories’ (ARL) soil testing lab is bringing in home-grown Kiwi ingenuity to fully automate the surprisingly physical and mentally taxing processes of preparing soil samples for analysis. The move to full automation will be a first for a soil testing laboratory, will help improve the accuracy of results for farmers, and build capacity so that more samples can be processed on a given day. ARL manager Will Bodeker says the investment will be significantly more than $500,000 but Covid-19 showed just how valuable the automation process could be. Alert Levels three and four came right at the time the lab typically sees the number of samples arriving ramp up towards
When the lab opened the samples came thick and fast.
54
its peak testing period of June, July and August. “In March we normally take on four fixed-term people and train them ready to support us through the busy period. “June, July, and August are our peak months when we receive 12,000 to 14,000 soils a month. “For comparison, in December and January we receive about 1500 tests a month.” A decision was made by Ravensdown not to test soil samples through Alert Levels four and three. Once the country returned to more normal business so did the lab but that meant a huge influx of samples coupled with the need to train people quickly. Sample numbers were 20-30% higher than
expected for this period with farmers in catchup mode. Pressure on the lab and courier delays led to a backlog and through late May and early June turnaround times for soil test results were up to 10 days instead of the targeted three to four days. It took until mid-June for things to return to a semblance of normal. “One consequence of Covid though has been a different skill set of people becoming available in the labour market so that’s allowed us to get them trained quickly and operating at a fairly good speed.” There’s a lot of physical work in handling the samples from when they arrive in bags to where they’re ready in solutions in testtubes for analysis. Clay soils are heavy and difficult to handle, for instance. “Some of them are in a state where we can sculpt them – we actually have our own sculpting competition amongst ourselves each year. “Along with the manual aspect it also requires a lot of attention to detail. Obviously we have systems but it still requires people to be thinking and engaged – it’s not the kind of job you can switch off for a minute or two.” When a sample arrives, the barcoded bag is scanned. Soil samples are then manually pushed through a 12mm sieve, which for heavier clay soils takes a bit of effort. They are then dried overnight and subsampled, which means weighing out
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | July 2020
