TBLPOD20june2013

Blue barrels of bombs and lists, prison guards imprisoned, tax call center, Abkhaz border probs, video destruction, Venice slam, Bakradze on UNM pres, Tbl Sakrebulo flight, UNM Pole bolts, High Council election, Alasania ups death payment, Vano’s TV, Chechens arrested, ag loan mess, dual citizens, Batumi mayor, TenderMonitor.ge, Kutaisi Nigerian, UNESCO boots Bagrati, Patriarch wants frequency, Basil anti-Jehova. Microsoft on piracy, Funicular restaurant opens, Yerevan train, human chain re higher ed law, Viennese Taburetka, Beselia on human rights, fertilizer

3 thoughts on “TBLPOD20june2013

  1. Georgia’s fertiliser use is low by world standards. Only 40% of farms use any fertiliser at all, and only 4% of farms use fertilisers other than Georgian-manufactured Ammonium Nitrate (a nitrogen fertiliser made with Russian natural gas in Rustavi). SOCAR are establishing another nitrogen fertiliser factory on the Black Sea coast, producing solid urea from Azeri gas, but most of this will be exported.

    Use of non-nitrogenous fertilisers is now well accepted in most modern farming sectors, including not only Potassium and Phosphate but other nutrients like Magnesium, Sulphur, Copper, Boron and Zinc, all of which are required by plants for good plant health, development and productivity, and these are frequently deficient in Georgian soils.

    The poor adoption of modern crop nutrition by Georgian farmers is partly attributable to lack of operating capital, partly due to risk aversion and a reluctance to tie up “too much” operating capital in a crop, and partly due to lack of experience and understanding. Modern potato farms run in Kvemo Kartli and Samtske-Javakheti by Georgian investors and modern cereal cropping properties owned by South Africans in Sartichala and Gardabani are starting to demonstrate the true productive potential of Georgian farming when modern nutrition and crop care is used, and neighbours are enquiring how to improve their yields using these techniques.

    While some soils in Georgia are of high fertility, after years under crop they will eventually become depleted of nutrients, yield and quality parameters of crop will fall, and the plants will need nutritional supplementation. This is the same everywhere in the world; you cannot “mine your soils” for nutrients indefinitely without replacing what you have removed. Soils in many mountain districts, many regions in Georgia’s west and parts of southeastern Georgia are objectively of low fertility and it is difficult to generate an economic return without appropriate modern plant nutrition methodologies. Acid soils in the Black Sea regions impair the ability of plants to absorb nutrient from soils and result in higher fertiliser requirements per hectare than in pH neutral soils.

    Those Georgian farmers obtaining yields within 20% of European norms are all practicing some version of modern crop nutrition, using solid or liquid chemical fertilisers in a responsible manner. The very high cost of soil and plant tissue testing in Georgia is forcing them to send samples abroad by airfreight to get cost-effective recommendations on how much fertiliser to apply to achieve a target yield of crop.

  2. I today had the chance to see Giga Bokeria, David Bakradze and Gigi Ugulava speak at an European People’s Party event in the European Parliament. The event was reasonably well attended about 70-80 people. Mainly assistants and interested staff I spotted a few Members of Parliament. The three performed very professionally underlining the UNM’s acceptance of their election defeat last year, whilst pointing out their in their eyes unfair treatment through the GD government. The striking thing was that Bakradze, when complaining about Merabishvili’s fate, obviously and very, very carefully avoided to state if he personally thought Merabishvili was innocent of the claims made against him. Is the UNM or Bakradze distancing himself from Merabishvili?

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