Reap what you shall sow is the saying and here Mineral Magic’s Commercial Manager (and original founder) in Nick Clayton is busy at work at the Crommelin Agricoatings Test Farm with Managing Director Hein De Villiers.
Here 70 bays with 5 different typical broadacre cropping soils collected from across WA are utilised to test various soil media and fertiliser coatings every year. This year saw Mineral Magic utilised across the trials.
Each bin as you can see is meticulously harvested and threshed by hand, then weighed and protein contents assessed. The differences between the best and the worst are quite astounding, but soil type and climatic conditions certainly play a part in that also.
It&rsquos important and relevant to state this test farm is outdoors and not climate controlled but then again, nor is any of the farms that ultimately these trials will progress too. Needless to say though, with an exceptionally wet Perth winter, some of the results versus the wheatbelt would appear to be certainly skewed.
What was conclusive from the 2022 trials however was the fact the Crommelin’s coatings on the commonly used MAP at seeding certainly created in increase in yield that would make the application extremely commercially viable.
Secondly when it comes to amorphous silica (Mineral Magic) even in a wet winter, lighter and sandy soils showed a far more impressive result than the heavier clays and this has steered us in 2023 to focus more on the sandy and hydrophobic soil areas rather than water holding clays.
Fortunately, the last two years in WA (where the trials have been conducted), our farmers have been blessed in most areas with some great support from the season and mother nature. Hopefully that its much later rather than sooner, our soil amendments will highlight much more benefits in a marginal year than a good year.