What a Difference a Year (or Two) Makes
The record-setting farm income levels of 2021 and 2022 are in the rear window, along with $6 corn and $14 soybean prices. With today’s tighter profit margins, it’s never been more critical to get the optimum ROI on every dollar you spend.
Question: How can corn and soybean growers get better performance out of nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium?
Dr. Berg: “When you consider something as simple as a P or K recommendation that many of us practice throughout the Midwest, none of those traditional methods or critical level recommendations take into account the moisture content of the soil throughout the growing season. That’s what makes our approach different and much more effective in getting the right amount of nutrient in exactly the right place, so growers get the optimum performance from their nutrient inputs.”
Question: Explain the Advanced Agrilytics methodology and why it delivers better ROI for growers.
Dr. Berg: “Our unique Advanced Agrilytics methodology divides acres into small, Hex-Grid™ segments – approximately 70 per acre. Then, we use our patented spatial analysis technology to examine multiple mechanisms and other factors within the soil that affect nutrient availability and uptake at that sub-acre level. We combine these into what we call a Spatial Critical Level calculation.
“Understanding the environment of the sub-acre allows us to be more proactive in a management plan and in how we approach that crop and acre throughout the growing season.”
Question: What is diffusion and why is it important in more effective nutrient management?
“Diffusion is the net movement of nutrients from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. It’s how relatively immobile nutrients like P and K get from the soil to the root hairs of plants. As plants absorb nutrients in their root zones, the concentration of those nutrients around the roots decreases, causing more nutrients from areas of higher concentration in the surrounding soil to diffuse toward the roots.”
Question: How does understanding diffusion help us manage our nutrients more efficiently?
Dr. Berg: “Water-limited environments are acres that the industry has typically told the grower to “give up on,” meaning lowering inputs and ultimately reducing yields even further. When you have fewer than 25 parts per million of phosphorus on a water-limited acre, the grower has only a 50/50 chance of reaching a yield of 200 bushels per acre. When soils contain more than 25 parts per million of phosphorus, the odds of achieving a 200 bushel per acre yield increase to 75%.
“Almost every growing season, we experience periods of reduced moisture availability. In the early part of the growing season, it’s a race to get P & K in the plant, particularly on the high ground where water limitations are often a serious risk. But what if we could reallocate our P & K investment dollars by putting higher concentrations of nutrients in environments with lower diffusion rates (high ground), and lower concentrations of nutrients in environments with higher diffusion rates (low ground). Then when we do receive soil moisture, we can make more efficient use of our fertilizer placement and move a tremendous amount of nutrients to the roots before the water-limited acres dry out again.
“A grower may not have the capability to do variable rate nitrogen or variable rate seed, but most growers do have the capability to do variable rate applications with their P and K. Making sure you are getting the precise nutrient concentration at the precise location for optimum nutrient efficiency makes everything about that plant more efficient. How that plant uses nitrogen, how that plant optimizes a fungicide application – it all becomes more efficient with optimized P and K availability.”
Every dollar you invest in your farm matters, especially when it comes to fertilizerand other costly inputs. Discover the agronomic insights that make a difference at https://advancedagrilytics.com and see how we can help transform your farming operation to create more consistent profitability and sustainability – for today and for future generations.
