Endure Program: Nutrient Management

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email

Nutrient management is a critical process of every farming operation. How to determine the appropriate rate of nutrients to maximize yield while minimizing the expense of fertilizer is an important decision to make each year. There are many aspects of this decision process that we must consider each year.



 

• Soil Test – Soil tests are critical to determine where we already have adequate fertility in the field and which areas need additional nutrients so that we can be confident that soil fertility is not the most limiting factor for that crop. We also need to ensure we are taking these samples often enough to have good data to work with. Any samples older than 4 years need to be updated.
• Yield goal or yield data – We need to be able to establish a realistic yield goal for each field to ensure we are managing the nutrients on that field correctly. Many of the calculations we use are based on yield and therefore having a realistic idea of what a field is capable of producing is important. Yield data for a field from a yield monitor is preferred as it allows us to create sub field level recommendations.
• Sources of fertilizer – It is important to consider all the sources of fertilizer that could be used on the field to build the best recommendation. This is usually limited to the available equipment. For example, if a starter system is available then we may recommend to deliver a portion of the fertility recommendation with that system.
• University Recommendations – We then use all the information available along with the recommendations of land grant universities to make a recommendation that will allow you to maximize yield while not applying fertility where it isn’t necessary or recommended to do so.
   

Once we have gathered all this information, we can then work to make a fertility recommendation for your operation. Again, the goal of this recommendation is to provide the nutrients that the crop needs for the year without over applying nutrients that we could lose to the environment, causing an environmental issue and costing you money.