The combine hasn’t left the field yet, but the 2027 fertility program is already being written — and for a third straight year, it’s being written by growers under real cost pressure.
“Growers are very cost-conscious right now, but I think the little bit of rally that we’ve had in the last few weeks is also making many growers rethink,” says Tryston Beyrer of Mosaic.
That rethinking is arriving at exactly the moment agronomists want it to. Yield data, soil samples and fall application windows all open the day the combine leaves the field, and Beyrer argues that fertility is one of the few line items where a grower still holds the pen.
“There’s a lot of things that growers don’t have control of, but one thing that they do have control of is the amount of fertility that they put out, and trying to identify where that fertility can provide the most value,” he says.
Three nutrients took the hit — but only one shows up in a soil test
Ask Beyrer where growers actually trimmed this past year and he names three nutrients: nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus.
“Coming in the spring, nitrogen and sulfur really ramped up, and I think there were some cuts,” he says. “However, those are not the two nutrients that I’d be really using soil tests to really correct, or try to identify where those deficiencies are. I take that more on a year-by-year basis.”
Phosphorus is the different animal — because phosphorus keeps a ledger.
“Phosphorus, we’re getting into multiple years consecutively where growers may not have been applying full crop nutrient removal rates,” Beyrer says. “I think it’s going to start to reflect in soil test trends.”
He expects the next soil test summary from The Fertilizer Institute to confirm it: “It’s going to reflect that even over the past five years — over a couple of those years when we had some better economics — that soil test levels have continued to decline, and phosphorus is going to be one of those big ones.”
That matters heading into 2027 because phosphorus is also the expensive one.
“Price per unit, phosphorus is higher than many of the other nutrients, so it’s probably going to be looking at where do growers spend those phosphorus dollars to try to make the best ROI,” he says.
This crop was wildly uneven. So soil tests will be, too.
The 2026 crop was made — and unmade — in very different ways depending on the ZIP code.
“Where I’m at in northern Wisconsin is record driest right now, but if you look down in central Illinois, and especially in Indiana, they’re record wettest,” Beyrer says. “Depending on if you’re in high slopes versus low slopes, depending on that different geography, you’re going to have a lot of yield variability.”
Removal follows yield, which means fall sampling on a coarse grid may average away the very information a grower needs.
“If it was me, I’d be trying to be more refined, or going smaller grids and … trying to soil sample to pick up that variability, because there’s a lot of very variable fields out there,” he says. “Within the field, you may have drowned-out spots and drought-stricken areas within a normal grid, so finding ways to try to … measure that variability would be huge.”
His read on where the numbers land is that most areas will see soil fertility declines, even stronger-yielding geographies.
“If you look in, like, Iowa and some of these other areas, southern Minnesota, there’s some very good yields, you’re going to have above average crop nutrient removal,” he says. “But in the grand scheme of things, coming into 2026, through the end of ’26, commodity prices were strain[ed], and growers weren’t putting out extra fertilizer, and oftentimes that starts to become reflected in the soil test that we’re mining or utilizing the nutrients that are out there. So I’d be surprised if we have too many scenarios where it’s a lot higher.”
Two things to do this harvest season
Beyrer has a straightforward harvest checklist. First, yield monitor calibration. That’s the first step in getting the best quality data to agronomic advisers.
“Make sure that they have calibrated yield monitors, and they can get that information quickly to the retailer, their agronomist, crop consultant that can help make maps and recommendations based off of that variability that’s seen within the fields,” he says.
Second, prioritize soil sampling.
“Look at the soil tests that they’ve had over the last couple years, or if they don’t have anything within the last few years, plan on taking some this fall, to just reflect where that is,” he says.
The cold-turkey temptation
The decision Beyrer most wants to head off is the all-or-nothing one — the grower who, “even without best judgment of an agronomist, [makes] the decision, I want to cut fertilizer out, and they may say, I’m just not applying anything, going cold turkey.”
“And I’d say the best thing that you can do is apply a little bit of something,” he says. “Even if you go back to economics, your best return of any dollar is your first increment of anything that you spent on.”
That holds even on ground where the soil test looks comfortable, because a 2.5-acre or five-acre sample doesn’t describe every plant standing in it.
“Sometimes there’s individual plants within there that can still respond, so even just a little bit of fertility out there might lessen the total impact of how much the soil tests will decline over the next few years,” Beyrer says.
Right place, right source — when the iron isn’t in the budget
Placement is the leg of the 4Rs that usually gets bought with steel. Strip-till bars, banding equipment, variable-rate technology (VRT) controllers — right place has a capital line attached to it, and in this economy that line is closed on a lot of operations.
“Growers like iron, if they can afford it, because they can see it, and they can see how it’s working out in the field,” Beyrer says. “But if you look at something that’s less expensive, or not as big of a capital investment, biologicals can fit in the same space.”
That’s a right-source answer standing in for a right-place one — and Beyrer frames it as the same move retailers have been making for years on nitrogen.
“Sometimes they don’t have the ability to necessarily do that strip-till, or banding … So some ways that they’re doing is they’re looking at additives, no different than how we put on NBPT, or N stabilizers on nitrogen,” he says. “Now we’re using different bacillus-based or different biologicals to enhance some of that nutrient availability of the fertilizer.”
The parallel is worth sitting with. A urease inhibitor doesn’t change the rate or the placement of a urea application; it changes what the source does once it’s out there. Mosaic’s argument is that a bacillus-based product works the same way on phosphorus and potassium — including on fertility that’s already in the soil profile from prior years.
“Mosaic’s very invested in the standpoint that we want to improve nutrient utilization, and biologicals is basically a different mode of action of how that we’re doing it,” Beyrer says.
Right time comes cheap here, too, because the product rides along on passes a grower is already making. “Many guys are putting in their top dress applications, either fall or in season,” he says. “There’s other people that are putting them in starter, and I think, depending on the specific formulation, I think that provides a lot of flexibility of what growers are doing to be able to match their system of when those biologicals are used.”
He’s candid about the catch, and it’s a real one for anyone planning to check the math on their own ground: the response is genuine but small enough to disappear. “Even if you look at our BioPath, it’s 4.1 bushel per acre response. Trying to see 4.1 bushels per acre is challenging, even as a trained agronomist. Even if it’s 10 bushels per acre, it’s tough to see out in the field. So from that, you had to really rely on multiple years of data.”
Which is its own 4R lesson. A right-source decision at this scale can’t be validated by windshield agronomy — it needs replicated strips and more than one season before a grower knows whether it earned the few dollars an acre.
One message for the 2027 crop: the 4Rs don’t work one at a time
Asked for a single takeaway, Beyrer goes to balance rather than to any one product — which is really an argument that right rate can’t be set nutrient by nutrient.
“Look at it holistically … it’d be looking at it from a balanced crop nutrition, or advanced crop nutrition perspective,” he says. “That’s not just making harsh decisions on just one nutrient here or there. They truly do work together.”
The example he reaches for makes the point sharper than any framework diagram: “We can apply nitrogen all day long. However, if you don’t have the right ratio of sulfur in there to turn that into protein, we’re short on a balanced crop nutrition message.”
Cutting one nutrient to protect another doesn’t hold the rate steady — it strands the dollars still being spent on the nutrient that stayed.
In a tight year, that logic points toward moving dollars rather than cutting them. Phosphorus is the priciest unit on the list, so the right-rate conversation becomes a right-source one. “Do we reinvest some of those dollars and make sure we’re applying more potash or other things that are a little bit more affordable on a nutrient basis?” Beyrer asks.
And right rate has to be set against a field’s actual variability, not its average — the reason he keeps returning to yield data and finer sampling. “VRT is going to be huge, understanding that variability across the field and matching that compared to doing a flat rate,” he says.
Beyrer’s own way of chaining the four together is a three-step process he walks through on nearly every call: availability, then uptake, then utilization.
“To improve nutrient use efficiency, a lot of times I’m first starting about improving nutrient availability. That’s where we talked about, you could add in, you could do strip-till, you could add in a biological, other things like that, where it releases some of those nutrients, helps prevent it from being tied up.” That improves uptake, he says, “which I’d say is really important early in the season, when we’re trying to set that yield potential.” Utilization is the payoff: “how the plants turn those nutrients into actual yield at the end of the year.”
His closing instruction is essentially the 4Rs read as a sequence — wide scope first, then the details of rate, place and time.
“Look at your fertility program, wide scope, then hone in to understand crop nutrient removal, as well as how we’re applying and when we’re applying it across the field,” he says, “to try to keep that nutrients available throughout the entire growing season, from the beginning all the way through grain fill.”
And if the equipment line stays closed for 2027, the efficiency line may not be: “It may not be the time to go out and buy a big, expensive piece of iron, but if we can increase some of the efficiency on a trip that you’re already going across the field for a few more dollars an acre, that could be a way to improve that efficiency of the nutrients that are getting applied out there.”
