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The Muster- Hamish and Alex McCallum: Bio Charge · The Muster on Hokonui

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, this is the muster on Hokanui.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Joined in studio this afternoon by Hamish and Alex McCallum
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: out of BioCharge.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Gentlemen, good afternoon, welcome into Hokanui.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: G'day. Hey, Hamish, we'll start with you first. BioCharge, you guys,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: well you've just joined up with Hokanui. Firstly, a bit
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: of a background about yourself, how.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: You got involved.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Right, so many years ago I came back from the
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Middle East and got involved with developing fish hydrolysates, and
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: many people will know me from other companies where I've
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: developed various brews of biologicals. However, last April, my son
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: and I decided to go ahead and do our own thing,
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: and we're up and doing it. I had the pleasure
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: of meeting, when I got back, Stan Winter, who is
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: one of my mentors, but Alex decided to sell his
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: e-com business and join the company.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: How are you finding it, Alex? We'll bring you in.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Enjoying working with Dad?
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it can be challenging at times. It's a big change,
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: but definitely loving it. It's sort of been three years
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: in the making with Dad and listening, well, probably 10 years, really,
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: of just listening to Dad's ideas and the journey he's
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: gone through around soil biology. I mean, probably 10 years ago, really,
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: The idea around fish hydroslates and stuff was deemed as
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: a snake oil. And I think dad was probably told
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: to bugger off from a few farms or whatever, up
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: a few driveways. But things have changed. And now, you know,
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: the focus on soil biology is really sort of becoming
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: a wee bit more talked about and mainstream. So, yeah,
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: it's just a completely different thing to me. But every
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: day is a school day and I'm here to just
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: keep learning.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: BioCharge has been a while in the making.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're a young company, but we're also quite old.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: The fact of the matter is I've done this now
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: on two or three different continents, so I bring quite
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: a bit of knowledge, I think, to it. But the
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: real exciting thing this year to me is the fact
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: that joining up with KiwiFoss and LM Mining to bring
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: locally mined New Zealand phosphate gives us conventional fertiliser and
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: also being able to supply... magnesium at a very, very
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: competitive price from Green Hills has really opened up doors
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: for us, really, because that conventional stuff's still needed, and
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: we're very competitive in the market. In fact, very, very competitive.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: And we don't have, as I was saying to you before,
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: we have no restrictions. We don't have a straight or
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: a most to navigate with our products. Our biggest product problem, sorry,
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: is roadworks or someone moving their sheep. That might slow
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: up our deliveries. But having those two products and an
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: exciting product called Solari N30 coming to the market, and
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Alex will probably talk more on that. But, yeah, no,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: it looks like a very good year. Just the bloody weather.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: It's been terrible.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And on that, how do you look at the soil biology,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: knowing you've had two months of rain?
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Solid.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Solid.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Hey, look, you've just got to be patient. When everything's
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: got wet feet, it's got wet feet. There's no air
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: in the soil. It'll come. It has in the last week,
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: 10 days, come right, and you can see all the
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: pasture growing away. I feel a wee bit sorry for
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: the guys who've been out with helicopters and trying to
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: do what they can to promote pasture growth, but really
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: patience is key at this time of year.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So you've got to play the long game. That's the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: only way you can look at it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody's looking for that magic fix. And probably now
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: is the time to look at looking to increase your
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: pasture dry matter and get yourself ahead of the game.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: As I said before, this El Nino is a real thing,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: and the climate changing is a real thing. And I
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: think farmers need to be well aware of that, and
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: especially not just this year, but in future years to come.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: How do farmers negate El Nino, Alex? What's the best
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: way to approach it?
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Well, we're doing some work around colloidal silica, which is
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: a relatively hot topic overseas at the moment. We're really
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: interested in providing some on-farm research with a product we
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: call Solara N30. It's a New Zealand-based colloidal silica that
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: produces monosilic acid. And monosilic acid is known to help
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: improve the uptake of phosphate considerably into the plant. But
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: what's really quite exciting here, probably not so much down
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: in Southend, but more for our customers up the East
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: Coast where we're predicting to see more of a drought,
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: is the strengthening of those sales walls and reduction of
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: transpiration of the plant really just shows some promise for
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: drought resistance. So that's a product that we're really, with
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  Speaker 4: the El Nino coming, we're really excited to work with
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  Speaker 4: people to get it on, get it applied, and How
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: would you call it, Dad? It's not a silver bullet,
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: but it's definitely part of the toolbox of that management
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: process for a head. How would you sort of.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, combining it... On its own, it's a good product,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: but when you combine it... You know, you remember the
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: days everybody used gibberellic acid and also done... Extended the
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: cell wall plant and made a great big watery plant.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: It looked good from the road. And that probably... It
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: did look good from the row, but it probably wasn't
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: doing the animal much good. So we've now combined that
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: with about 8 grams of jib to the hectare, 300
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: mils only of our salarion 30, and 10 to 15
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: litres of our fish. And we've got that going on
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: on various farms at the moment in research. And look,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: the initial studies are showing us that we're doing pretty
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: well because one combats the other. The salarion, is strengthening
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: the cell walls of the plant while the gibb acid
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: is trying to accelerate the elongated growth. And we are
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: seeing a denser dry matter in the sward, at the
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: bottom of the sward of the plant. So that's exciting.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So it's all liquid fertilizer you guys deal with?
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. We've got conventional phosphate rock. We have
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: to call it DARP, which is direct application phosphate rock.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: It's got around six to seven somewhere in there, but
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: it's a natural product. And then we've also got, and
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: it has about a one unit of P in it.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: But the key to this, it is biologically bio-grade certified
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: and has no heavy metals. So you don't get any cadmium.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: You don't get any chromium. There's no heavy metals at all.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: They're not detected so far around the X-ray diffraction. And
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: we give you one unit of potassium in there for nothing.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: What's your key message to farmers today?
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Look, I think, you know, with the weather conditions we've had,
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: patience is key. The weather's going to come right. The
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: soil's going to come right. If you really want to
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: get things pinging, go and get yourself an aerator. Make
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: sure that you release a bit of oxygen into that
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: soil because the dam stuff's pugged. And you'll see benefits.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: You'll see it happen. Try a bit of our product.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: See how you go. We'd love to get some more
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: people on our research programs. So just contact us at biocharge.co.nz. Hey, look,
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: we'd just love to have a chat to you.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Good on you guys. Thanks for coming in studio this afternoon.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Appreciate your time.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Cheers, man.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Hamish and Alex McKellum of BioCharge. Josh Bennett's up next
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: to wrap up.