Hatuma Lime

The company was started in 1932 and grew to be one of the biggest suppliers of agricultural lime in the country. It was established by some Wellington market gardeners looking for limestone that they could use on their properties that was within easy access of a railhead. It was taken over by the Topp family in the 1950s.

It has three sites Mauriceville, Hatuma and Waipawa on the East Coast plus two depots in Marton and Wairoa.

The Hatuma lime deposit is said to be particularly good lime for agricultural purposes, offering a porous product ideally suited for spreading by ground or by air. 

The company story is that in the late 1950s/early 1960s Joe Topp, Aaron’s grandfather and the then GM of the Hatuma Lime Company, was facing a deflated market as subsidies were removed for lime application.

At the same time Joe was seeing the arrival of water soluble acid fertilisers that – according to him – were risking nutrient saturated soils and polluted waterways.

Joe Topp started making Dicalcic phosphate in the early 1960s. His son Cliff came into the business in 1964 and these days son Aaron is also involved with the business.

Cliff says the company has been through hard times. The availability and marketing of superphosphate, at the expense of lime, meant a focus on fertilisers that could offer a quick boost in pasture production without a longer term view on the effect on soil health, animal health or any of the downstream environmental impacts that are now becoming apparent.

Dicalcic phosphate is also known as lime-reverted superphosphate.

It is is made by reacting superphosphate with an alkaline or liming agent that changes moncalcium phosphate into dicalcium phosphate.

Aaron explains they mix lime, super and water together and allow it to sit. The product becomes hard, as a chemical reaction takes place between the 3 ingredients. They then crush and screen it to make it a product that can be spread.

The company started marketing a dicalcic phosphate fertiliser that they say has a number of advantages over superphosphate :

• That it is less water-soluble, therefore presents less waste and less chance of runoff into waterways.
• It is pH neutral so it assists soil pH conditions without burning seed.
• That it is a phosphate product with liming benefits, which creates savings in application.
• The lime component maintains optimum soil pH.

Farmer customers who endorse the fertiliser say they like the fact that the product is non-water soluble so that it stays in the soil for the plants to use and doesn’t run off.

Farmer William Wallace says he sees the benefits in the soil, his pastures and his stock. He says he doesn’t want to spend more than he needs to on fertilizer and the dicalcic product seems to fit him extremely well.

Hatuma was part of a Farming for the Future Programme from 2009 to 2016. The research monitored 11 North Island hill country properties that applied dicalcic phosphate instead of high analysis fertilisers. The aim was to gain better understanding of the wider outcomes of lower nutrient input use on farms using DCP. The trial was undertaken by The Agri Business Group and funded by Hatuma Dicalcic Phosphate Ltd.

Farms taking part in the trial used less than half the amount of P than traditional fertilizer inputs. Key findings indicated that production and financial outcomes on the farms using DCP could be maintained using a lower nutrient input, while environmental impacts were minimised.

Earlier research that monitored DM (dry matter) production on fertilisers containing Dicalcic Phosphate indicated they were not more effective that water soluble fertilisers – with the exception of soils where leaching of P is a significant source of P loss.

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Additional notes from the Farming for the Future Research Project

Dave Lucock, Jayson Benge and Jon Manhire

The Agribusiness Group

Project background

In 2009, the ‘Farming for the Future’ research project was established with the aim of clarifying the production, financial and environmental outcomes of lower nutrient input sheep/beef farming systems particularly relative to conventional farming systems. Anecdotal and farmer testimonials have indicated that such systems improved farm performance and so this project set out to provide an independent analysis of that.

The Farming for the Future programme is focused on finding ways to future-proof New Zealand’s natural advantage by asking:

• How can farming systems operate more ecologically efficiently and sustainably with less/different inputs
• What input savings and environmental benefits can be gained while maintaining or increasing production?
• How can we better understand the outcomes of lower nutrient input on sheep/beef farming systems and in particular those which utilise Dicalcic Phosphate?

Since 2009 the Farming for the Future programme has been measuring the outcomes on 12 lower input North Island hill country sheep/beef farms, most of whom have already been farming this idealism successfully for many years. These farms can be divided into three groups based on years of lower nutrient input use:

•  ‘new’ (0 -2 years)
•  ‘medium-term’ (5 -10 years)
•  ‘long-term’ (> 15 years)

Each year, independent consultants from The Agribusiness Group (www.agribusinessgroup.com) have undertaken the following:

•  Comprehensive soil and pasture quality assessments (including soil biology)
•  Farmers interviewed annually with farm physical attributes, management inputs, production and financial data captured and analysed
•  Overseer® is used to gauge environmental outcomes
•  Farm outcomes are compared against available local or national benchmarks as well as findings from the ARGOS project (www.argos.org.nz)
•  Detailed reports written with considerable input from soil scientist Peter Carey (Land Research Services).

The objective is to monitor the properties as long as possible to build a robust set of data to assess how changes in farm inputs – such as fertilisers – affect performance and efficiency. 

Benge, J. & Lucock, D. (2014). Farming for the Future Research Project