cadmium, page-2

A few thoughts to follow up on MAFs Cadmium Working Group as I posted the above excerpt in a hurry without any real comment-

1) MAK need to make the low-Cd nature of their product abundantly clear to Ballance and other NZ fertiliser companies (eg., Ravensdown), as an advantage over OCPs product (Im probably being nave to assume that theyre not already doing this);

2) The NZ Govt, if they are genuinely concerned about rising soil Cd, need to be made aware that a better alternative to Moroccan RP exists just across the ditch. It would be a stretch of course to talk subsidies, esp in this day and age, but if they were really serious about mitigating the Cd issue effectively, it might be easiest to offer a token subsidy per tonne of low Cd RP to importers (regardless of source but MAK would be the obvious choice) rather than put the ambo at the bottom of the cliff and worry about extracting Cd from RP (or the soil itself);

3) I hope that it proves to be physically impossible to remove Cd from RP, or at least economically unviable. Better to spend the $ on nice clean shiny MAK RP rather than on cleaning up dirty old OCP stuff. :-)