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THIS PROMOTIONAL FEATURE WAS PROVIDED BY BALLANCE AGRI-NUTRIENTS

Reducing on-farm losses is no easy task, made even more daunting when driven by regulatory requirements.

Around the country farmers, whether to comply or to increase profits and become more sustainable, are working on reducing losses of the four main contaminants to water: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), sediment and E. coli.

“Even just identifying the main areas of losses (critical source areas) for a single issue can be challenging. P loss, for example, varies spatially across the farm landscape with changes in key factors such as soils which impact P loss,” says Ballance Agri-Nutrients Nutrient Dynamics Specialist Jim Risk.

Once critical source areas are identified, Jim says it is only prudent to assess the cost and effectiveness of various mitigation options before deciding on a course of action, especially if meeting a target is involved.

Enter MitAgator

MitAgator is a cutting-edge software tool that makes identifying critical source area losses and finding the most efficient and cost-effective management options much easier.

Developed by Ballance Agri-Nutrients together with AgResearch, it incorporates arounds 30 years of independent research into nutrient and sediment loss and E. coli risk, and is the first ever tool that singlehandedly deals with all four main contaminants.

MitAgator can produce risk maps for each contaminant on a farm, showing areas of greatest risk for losses and relative risk of losses within the property, as well as prioritising areas for mitigations. Jim says farmers have commented that the visual nature of the risk maps makes it a lot easier to relate the losses to the property.

MitAgator currently has 24 mitigations built into it, including lesser known, recently researched mitigations, as well as more widely known ones such as fencing waterways and riparian planting. As future research into new mitigations is completed, more mitigations will be added.

“Many existing on-farm mitigations that are yet to be quantified and accounted for in terms of effectiveness can be selected from MitAgator’s built-in set of mitigations, providing information on the effectiveness of work already done and demonstrating reductions already made,” says Jim.

MitAgator can also test scenarios by providing information on mitigation options to reach a set target, or by seeing what can be achieved by different combinations of mitigation options.

Put MitAgator to work

MitAgator is operated exclusively by Ballance’s Farm Sustainability Services team and three service packages are available:

• Risk maps
• Risk maps and mitigation scenario analysis
• Risk maps, scenario analysis and farm environment plan

MitAgator is just one outcome of the Ballance Agri-Nutrients led Clearview Innovations Primary Growth Partnership programme, set up to develop products to increase nutrient use efficiency and reduce nutrient losses to the environment. The programme was supported by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation’s Clean Water, Productive Land programme, which funded development of the algorithms behind MitAgator.

More information on MitAgator is available at www.ballance.co.nz/mitAgator. To find out more about the MitAgator service, phone 0800 222 080 or email farm.sustainability@ballance.co.nz