In 2005, our personnel oversaw and managed two of the most prominent and largest projects in the land conversion industry – converting over 70,000 hectares of pine forestry back into dairy and farm land in New Zealand, including 30,000 hectares for the Selwyn Plantation Board near Christchurch. We set benchmarks in this industry and developed systems unmatched by any other business, working with our customers to develop systems, methods and machinery for the entire project – including biological microorganisms that help break down the mulch and shift the soil regime from fungal (the predominant regime in forestry) to bacterial (the predominant regime in pasture).

Our approach is to utilise as much of the remaining residue as possible. You will only have one opportunity in a lifetime to increase the organic matter in your soil in a single operation – this is it. Once the organic matter is incorporated into the soil, we convert it into a useable product for plant uptake to maximise pasture growth. The mulch acts as a moisture retention barrier, alleviates leaching, and helps retain nutrients and fertilisers in the soil.

Independent trials by a major agricultural business across the North and South Islands of New Zealand found the single common denominator for improved pasture growth was the amount of organic matter in the soil. Our process lifts soil organic matter from a typical 3–5% to as much as 43%. Every 10% increase in organic matter is equivalent to roughly 1 tonne of additional dry matter per hectare per year – in dairy terms, a potential 1,000 additional litres of milk per hectare that would otherwise take at least five years of conventional dairying to achieve.