Feeding the world’s growing population

New Zealand’s reputation as a quality food producer is growing.

Optimising food production

Over the next 50 years farmers around the world will need to produce more food than has been grown over the past 10,000 years.

Best use from a limited resource

Fertiliser helps farmers produce food efficiently by replenishing the soil. But fertiliser needs to be used responsibly.

Responsible and sustainable nutrient management

The Fertiliser Association invests in research and tools to ensure farm profitability while minimising nutrient losses to the environment.

The Fertiliser Association of New Zealand promotes and encourages responsible and scientifically-based nutrient management.

Read more

Responsible Sourcing

Our Members’ approach to business and human rights

The supply of fertiliser in New Zealand relies on international sourcing. The range of risks considered and assessed are growing in scope and depth, and human rights risk is an increasingly important part of this consideration.

The fertiliser industry in New Zealand is dominated by farmer-owned co-operatives. This means our Members are particularly aware that the inputs and fertiliser they supply are at the start of a long supply chain that ultimately lands on consumers’ plates. Our members anticipate that during the next decade consumers will increasingly consider any potential human risk in the same way as they now consider environmental risk. Increasingly, assessment of human rights risks will be core to doing business. Our industry is deepening assessment of human rights risk as part of wider assessment activities.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) set out an approach for such assessments. Our Members acknowledge they are at an early stage of adopting the UNGPs within our industry. They have started with an industry wide Human Rights Statement.

In this Statement our Members focus on the following social values:

  • Health and safety
  • Freely chosen employment
  • Child labour
  • Discrimination
  • Freedom of association

Our Members are currently working on how to embed these approaches within existing business practices. This process will not necessarily bring new processes and assessments within their businesses but will extend and deepen existing practices.

Having committed to adopting the UNGPs, our Members have already undertaken an assessment of one key supplier to New Zealand – the supply of phosphate rock from the OCP mine at Phosboucraa in Western Sahara.

The Fertiliser Association of New Zealand and Dairy NZ funded development of the Nutrient Management Adviser Certification Programme (NMACP). This industry-wide certification aims to ensure that advisers have the learning, experience and capability to give sound nutrient advice.

Find out more

28 June 2023

Dairy farmers milking cows on a farm area of more than 20 hectares are required to record synthetic nitrogen use on their dairy platform land, including a zero-kg record if no synthetic nitrogen is used. The regulations require data to be submitted by 31 July each year for the preceding year ended 30 June. 

14 May 2023

The New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research has published a paper titled Nitrogen fertiliser use in grazed pasture-based systems in New Zealand. The research paper was commissioned by the Fertiliser Association of New Zealand and written by AgReserch senior scientist Colin Gray.


Sign up for our Newsletter

Stay in touch with the latest fertiliser industry news and research

Sign up

MoST Content Management V3.0.8634