Over the past few years an Orini family has been bringing life back to the land they live on by planting thousands of different species and cleaning up the area.

Kayol Robinson lives in modest farm house on the site of an old dairy factory with his wife Saradee Holten-Robinson and their four children. 

The couple believes in leaving the Earth a better place for their children. It’s that philosophy that led Kayol to study the soil around him.

Through his independent research, Kayol has developed a liquid fertiliser in a bid to rid New Zealand farms of urea and to bring nature back to its full potential through essential nutrients. 

Kayol has a background in chemistry thanks of his father, Tom Robinson, the creator of Earthwise – a range of natural and environmentally friendly products.

“My old man was a chemist and I learned everything from him. I’ve always had mentors. I never went to a university and got a certificate, I’ve just worked in the field since I was a teenager.

“My dad started Earthwise, so when I left school I worked there. Eventually I was the Hamilton manager,” he said.

Kayol left Earthwise in 2013.

“I drove trucks for a little while, which was fun, but in the end, it was mining the land, which I didn’t like. Man, they burn a lot of fuel,” he said as he shook his head.

But, he said, driving trucks gave him a lot of time to study and to decide what he wanted to do next.

“And what I really wanted to do was help farmers and the earth.

“With Earthwise, I knew that we’d created something to help the general public be more consciously aware for a good price. That was cool, but it wasn’t for me anymore.

“The biggest impact I could see on our earth was from farming, so I thought there must be a way to do it in a more environmentally conscious way.”

Kayol said farming wasn’t to blame for all of our environmental issues, but he believes you have to start somewhere. 

“I looked into it, I found myself mentors and I did a lot of my own research.”

Kayol also had experience in this area when he previously worked for a company called Better Crop making organic insecticides and fertilisers. That company ceased trading in 2000.

“In 2014, I was doing soil testing and fertiliser recommendations, more towards eco farming, looking at trace minerals as well as standard NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) blends...trying to create healthy nutritious pasture for the animals and crops. I was working predominantly with dairy farms, sheep and beef with my start-up company, Farm Matters. 

“That was around about the time that dairy went for a downturn and I was finding that a lot of farmers were cutting back costs, and one of the first things to get cut was the fertilisers.

“I noticed quite a few farmers had spent all this time and money building up the fertility in their soil and then just cutting it back. From that, I developed a liquid fertiliser.

“I knew what elements were required and I just tinkered in my lab until I got it right. The chemical process is the secret. I don’t think there are many others who can keep things in suspension like I can.”

Fertwise, the fertiliser, was born and Kayol’s goal was to create an affordable liquid fertiliser that provided the nutrients needed to run a healthy farm. 

In late 2016 Kayol was given a research and development grant by Callaghan Innovation to do liquid fertiliser trials with his creation.

“We had to make sure it worked. In theory we knew it should work, but we needed to see for ourselves that it would. So we did. We didn’t just do one trial, like one metre square like they usually do. We did eight paddocks.”

Before that though, he helped with an independent study, which is still in the process of being published, collecting information from farmers that compared the method of soil testing and fertiliser application he used, with figures from the Dairy NZ national standard. Kayol said the farms that were studied out-performed the Dairy NZ national average. 

Kayol was still in the process of making his fertiliser at this time, but the results told him he was on the right track.

The soil and pasture testing Kayol did showed that the method he used made a huge difference, not just to the land, but to the animals and the costs to the farmers as well.

During the fertiliser trials, pasture tests showed that minerals had increased in plants and soil after the fertiliser was applied. 

“Vet bills were under; fertiliser costs were under. Just all round, they did better.”

And now that Fertwise is developed, Kayol is the first to say it’s not all you need.

“It’s made to work alongside farmers’ normal granular applications, this is because farmers will still have to apply lime, which has the calcium needed for a healthy farm, Fertwise is an excellent urea replacement. 

“There’s a high use of urea in New Zealand. About 900,000 tonnes of urea was manufactured and imported into New Zealand last year.

“The problem with applying so much urea is it puts a lot of stress on the environment, on the farm. It forces roots to grow up and makes the microbiology lazy. You get things like mycorrhiza fungi that draw nitrogen out of the atmosphere and feed plants naturally. With urea, they don’t need to do their job anymore so, in a sense, you lose nature.”

He said people continued to use urea because they’d been sold a product that gave them a quick boost.

“When they originally started putting nitrogen (urea) on, it would have been about 30 to 40 kilos per hectare. Slowly they have stopped getting the same response so they add more. It’s common now to be 90 kilos per hectare. 

“I want to replace urea with my liquid fertiliser and instead of just having the one element, I’ve got 12.

“Plants need 16 elements. My fertiliser has 12 of those. It’s NPK-based, but it is made up of so much more.”

The other nine elements are magnesium, sulphur, manganese, cobalt, copper, selenium, molybdenum, boron, and zinc, but Kayol can also make custom blends.

He said, at the moment, he makes it from home, “ironically in an old dairy factory”.

The Farm Matters website has just been re-made and is where they sell Fertwise.

“Getting the product into stores is the next step,” Kayol said.

Kayol said he wasn’t the only one doing this, but he believed it was important.

“We have Far North farmers using it and we’ve been getting good feedback. They like the cost of it, they like that they’re getting all of those nutrients in there.

“It’s also easy because farmers can have it on hand and spread it when the weather is right which means they don’t need to wait for a spreader.

“One farmer up north wants it because he’s been getting in young beef stock that are sickly and he has no way of getting nutrients into them so he’s looking at using the liquid fertiliser because it’s spray on and they can eat that.

“It’s healthy for the land and healthy for the animals and then it becomes healthy for us. Without them getting the nutrients, then we’re not getting the nutrients.”

Kayol said as well as wanting to rid New Zealand of urea, he wanted to help cut down on granular fertilisers because they’re quite expensive to apply and there’s a lot of waste.

“But, my number one motivation is to make the earth a better place for my kids. Fertwise can be used on farms in place of urea and I’d also like to see it used in horticulture, in orchards, and as far as our brand, Farm Matters, I’d like people who see something with our brand on it to know that it’s coming from a place that is environmentally conscious.

“It’s a hard road by ourselves. We have to wait for attitudes to change and for people to realise that there are a lot of ways to do things, not just one. And there are ways to take care of our environment and have results ten-fold to what they’ve had before.”