Five Things to Consider During Fall Fertility Planning
It’s that time of year again. The crops are maturing in the field, and corn and soybean farmers start thinking about their fall fertility planning. Along with mulling over the usual decisions of what inputs are needed, where, and at what rate, there is other, more sobering news for growers to contemplate this year.
Farmers Are Feeling the Squeeze
Read any U.S. agriculture trade website or magazine or listen to your local farm broadcaster. The news about the poor U.S. agricultural economy isn’t hard to find. Here’s a couple of key statistics:
- The U.S. Corn Farm Price Received is at a current level of $4.48, down from $4.51 last month and down from $6.49 one year ago. This is a change of -0.67% from last month and -30.97% from one year ago1.
- Despite relatively low demand, the price of phosphorus fertilizer remains high. In multiple recent media reports, Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer with StoneX, says some phosphate products, such as MAP, are up as much as $70 per ton 2,3.
The current ag economic situation makes it even more critical to be as precise as possible with fall fertility planning, says Travis Kimmel, Director of Agronomic Technology with Advanced Agrilytics.
“We’re having honest conversations with growers about how they can get the best return on their fertility investment,” he says. “It’s never been more important for a grower to optimize nutrient placement for the greatest benefit and least amount of waste.”
Getting that optimum ROI means going beyond the traditional “acre-by-acre” nutrient management mindset. Here are 5 key things to keep in mind when doing your fall nutrient planning this year.
1. Soil type isn’t everything you need to know.
There is so much more going on in your acres than just the soil type. In fact, soil type represents only 8% of the variability in the acre’s environment. It’s understanding the other 92% of what influences yield that is the key to getting the best ROI on fertilizer expenditures, says Kimmel.
2. A “Whole Systems” Approach Produces Better ROI.
Advanced Agrilytics takes a holistic approach when analyzing the environment and making recommendations. Many factors affect how and why nutrients are available to a plant and how well that plant can access and take up those nutrients.
“Our holistic approach looks at a wider variety of factors beyond what are normally considered – factors such as soil type, soil test results or basic pH,” Kimmel says. “These can all influence nutrient uptake and availability and where shifts in nutrient management will make the greatest, most positive impact for our growers. It’s far more than just nutrient recommendations. We want to understand how different practices interact, such as seed selection, seeding rates, fertility management, soils and cultural practices, and how they influence outcomes across the landscape.”
3. Deeper Data Analysis Means Better ROI.
Making nutrient recommendations on an acre-by-acre basis (the traditional way) can result in inefficient nutrient placement by not addressing the nuances of the sub-acre landscape.
Advanced Agrilytics digs deep into the data by spatially analyzing multiple factors in this landscape. This includes factors such as how and why water moves into and out of the sub-acre environment. Then assessing how that movement affects key mechanisms such as diffusion, mineralization, seeding rate, vegetative plant mass, and denitrification, and how that affects plant development, is examined.
By looking at the soil environment at the sub-acre level and examining these key mechanisms, Advanced Agrilytics can pinpoint which part of the acre would benefit most from more nutrient input or where applications of nutrients should be reduced to minimize runoff and utilize nutrients in a more productive, sustainable way.
4. Go Beyond the Boundaries of Traditional Nutrient Management.
“Our analysis goes beyond traditional acreage boundaries, because the environment of your acre is affected by things in the overall landscape, regardless of where your land boundary starts and your neighbors’ ends,” explains Kimmel. “For example, water doesn’t recognize boundaries. It moves onto and away from the acre based upon topography, not where the boundaries are located.”
By looking at the acre as part of an overall landscape, Advanced Agrilytics can provide more precise data regarding factors such as water movement, which areas are more prone to nutrient loss and where nutrient placement will reap the best potential ROI.
Another way Advanced Agrilytics improves upon traditional nutrient management recommendations is in terms of determining critical levels of nutrients. Traditional fertility recommendations are based on “static critical levels” of nutrients.
Advanced Agrilytics adds many more layers of analysis to their recommendations – using a proprietary Spatial Critical Level calculation that uses the principles of Critical Level calculations, but then layers in additional data factors such as physical properties, landscape position and soil moisture, and how they affect mechanisms such as diffusion, which is how plants take in key nutrients such as P and K.
By layering these critical data points together and looking at the way they affect the environment of the sub-acre, Advanced Agrilytics provides a more precise nutrient management plan with more optimal nutrient placement and less waste.
5. Know Where is Plant Stress More Likely to Happen
Another factor Kimmel considers when doing fall fertility planning is analyzing where plant stress is most likely to occur across acres during the growing season. These might be sloped or hilly areas that have a hard time maintaining adequate soil moisture. Or they might be low-lying parts of the landscape where water accumulates, limiting nutrient availability and causing increased stress on growing plants.
In both “at-risk” areas of each field, precision nutrient applications can help make nutrients optimally available to plants, increasing plant health and helping plants endure stress due to too much or too little moisture availability.
Summary
Advanced Agrilytics captures deep, layer-upon-layer environmental data analysis on customers’ acres year after year, and with time, areas thought of as traditionally agronomic “problem areas” become increasingly stable, weather resilient and more manageable with the company’s unique methodology.
For more agronomic insights and to learn more about how to get the most out of each and every acre you farm, visit https://advancedagrilytics.com.
Be proactive against Mother Nature
Connect with our agronomic experts to better understand how the unique attributes of your acre and our understanding of its mechanisms can provide insights for an already challenging year.