Aerial Topdressing - Environmental Impact

Environmental Impact

Ironically, given the industry was started by government research aimed at soil conservation, a number of negative impacts have emerged. The two major criticisms are the run off of fertiliser into streams and waterways which encourages marine plant growth, leading to choking of the waterways and altering the fresh water ecosystem, disadvantaging many fish, (and frustrating anglers). To minimise impact, topdressing is now prohibited within certain distances of water. The second impact is less direct. By enabling sheep to be run profitably on steep hillsides, the topdressing industry stopped reforestation of otherwise uneconomic land, contributing to the erosion it was originally designed to prevent.

The mining of superphosphate from guano deposits on the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru temporarily made the island one of the richest nations in the world on a per capita basis, but removed most of the soil from the island making 80% of it unusable.