By Shengyan Wang, reporter from Economic Daily News: “More fertilizing is the better” had been firmly believed concept of Chengli Ge, a farmer lives in Xingjia Village of Dongwang County in Shandong Province, for decades. When vegetables and fruits were in poor condition, the first things he considered was that it must be lack of fertilizer.But when he took wilted young muskmelons and showed them to Dr. Youlu Bai, an expert from Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, who came here to give guidance for fertilizing, he observed it carefully and said: “It is a pity you give too much fertilizer I’m afraid, it’s not lack of fertilizing caused wilting plant but the wrong way of handling.The more fertilizer would do more harm to the plant in this way.”Chengli Ge just could not believe this conclusion: “I have been in farming for life, but it is the first time I have heard the theory.”Dr. Bai said to him: “I can make your poorly grown vegetables and fruits better.”

This story happened before long during the activities of agricultural services organized by Sinochem Corporation.As the largest supplier and distributor of chemical fertilizer products, Sinochem Corporation reached total sales of 12 million tons of chemical fertilizer in 2006.However, Sinochem found many misconceptions among the customer groups for fertilizing, and there are still many farmers like Chengli Ge.A leader of Sinochem, who participated in the service activity on-the-spot in Linyi in Shandong Province, told the reporter: “we can never afford to ignore the consequent of incorrect fertilizing, as the result, it cause direct and indirect losses such as increasing cost, usage rate lower than 30% on average; contaminating the soil and hardening the soil, excessive nitrogen or phosphor, lack of kalium or secondary and trace elements; waste farmers’ money, fertilizer and labor but what they got is little harvest.” The corrective method mentioned by Dr. Bai is under experiment in the places such as Liyi in Shandong, etc. and we will popularize earth test and fertilizing prescription nationwide in this year.

There were only few villagers know about earth test and fertilizing prescription, and Cui Chenggong, the secretary of the village, is one of them.Few years before, Sinochem organized the activity of earth test and fertilizing prescription in LInyi of Shandong Province.As the leader of scientific agriculture in the village, Chenggong Cui followed the advice by Sinochem with the idea of having a try.It was really happen to him that the vegetables and fruits grow very well when using less fertilizer, as they recommended.

What is the earth test and fertilizing prescription? Jixiong Lin, a specially invited expert by Sinochem Corporation and works in the countryside in the long term basis, told the reporter: ”Earth Test means that testing the nutrient elements of soil, and study the relationship between the content of nutrition in the soil and the amount of fertilizer needed for the soil; Prescription is to analyze and calculate the amount of different kinds of fertilizers needed for the soil according to the targeted output of crop and the content of nutrition contained in the soil of the crop;Fertilizing is to arrange different kinds of fertilizers needed for the soil reasonably, and used them as base fertilizer, seeds fertilizer or top dressing fertilizer.

Earth test and fertilizing prescription is totally the correction of the conventional concept of fertilizing, therefore, if make the farmers have traditional fertilizing concept in mind to accept the new idea, it needs patient persuasion.

Every year, Sinochem have over 500 training activities for earth test and fertilizing prescription nationwide, and the farmers received the service is over 2 million.The reporter listened to a lecture by an expert from Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, which was organized by Sinochem in Linyi of Shandong Province.The villagers attended the lecture were mostly the activists of scientific agriculture, and they would go back home and impart the related knowledge to the many more farmers in the village, and it has wide coverage for popularization of technology.

The atmosphere is full of vitality, and the expert carefully analyzed the contents of different kinds of trace elements in the sample soil, and explained the theory of balanced fertilizing technology, symptoms and solutions for the lack of nutrition in the soil in explicit and comprehensive way and made it easy to understand.Farmers one after another bring about questions from their daily work in production, and the experts answered their questions in details with patience.

On one hand, make farmers accept new concept of fertilizing through training, on the other hand, the key of fertilizing is practical operation, but the level of earth test and fertilizing proscription technology is very high and needs hi-tech equipments, so that ordinary farmers cannot afford to do earth test by themselves.Sinochem specially established earth test and fertilizing proscription laboratories and service centers all over the country, and the service center of Linyi of Shandong is established in the factory area of Sinochem Shandong Chemical Fertilizer Co. Ltd.The attendant of service center told the reporter that they tested about 20,000 samples of soil annually.

Service center has service agencies and service centers are mostly located in rural area and villages and directly face up farmers. Farmers send soil samples from their field to the service agency and from there send to service center.It takes about one week to see the result of earth test and send it back to service agency.

At the service center, the reporter takes one test form which was the earth test form of Xueuguang Zhang, a farmer of Hedong village in Yinan County.On the test form, clearly stated that the soil of his field has unbalance structure, and has excessive nitrogen but is lack of kalium, and suggested that it needs to reduce the nitrogen fertilizer while increase kalium.

One of the key factors of earth test is soil sample selection. In Xingjia Village, the reporter came to Chengli Ge’s fields followed Dr. Youlu Bai.Today is the date for collecting his soil sample, and the attendant of Sinochem Corporation selected the soil from 20 points of the field with soil sampling instrument, and the samples are picked up at 20cm deep from the surface, and then mix them evenly so that the sample can represent the property of the whole field.The soil sample will be sent to service center soon, Chengli Ge said; ”very soon, the status of my field will be very clear and it will help me have a good harvest for vegetable and fruits in the nest season..”