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[00:00:00] Mike Howell: The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an ekonomics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by ekonomics.com farming’s go-to informational resource. I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research use, and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
Well, hello again listeners. Welcome back to the Dirt. Glad you’re tuning in this week. We have got Eric Snodgrass back in the studio with us. We haven’t had Eric on in a while. We’ve had some other issues coming up all through the summer, but we kind of gave Eric a break, but we haven’t forgot about the weather.
We know there’s a lot of things going on with the weather and we wanted to get Eric on. Before we wrap this season up, give us an outlook for what we’re going into going into winter and finishing up this crop for this year. Eric, welcome back to the dirt and if you will remind everybody who you are and what you do.
[00:01:06] Eric Snodgrass: Thanks for having me back on. I am Nutrien Ag Solutions Senior Science Fellow, and I do a lot of weather analysis and forecasting for production act, not only here in the States but around the world. So it’s my job to keep an eye on the weather because it’s gonna be one of the biggest sources of risk for our customer growers.
So that’s my job and I just try to communicate as best I can like you do.
[00:01:25] Mike Howell: That’s exactly right. Eric, we sure appreciate you taking time to visit with us today. I look at the weather every morning. I’m a little nervous about what’s going on here around my house. We need to be planting rye grass and it’s really dry.
We started off really wet and couldn’t get hay cut, and now it’s so dry we can’t get rye grass planted. It’s just a dust bowl out there, but I looked at the drought monitor this morning and it looks like the drought is expanding. We’ve seen drought across the south for the last three or four years, but is this drought any worse than it’s been in the last few years?
I hear more and more talk about it. This year seems to be getting a little worse here at the end of the year. What do you know about the drought?
[00:01:58] Eric Snodgrass: Well, you’re right about the summer we came into spring and summer with too much water, right? We were getting hammered with storm systems. It was one of the wettest springs and early summer on record.
And then about August 1st, the Bermuda High just drifted away from Bermuda, went over toward the Azores, which is on the other side of the Atlantic, and it stopped that deep pull of tropical moisture. In fact, every single hurricane we’ve had up to now, including Emelda and what was before that, Gabrielle, Umberto, Fernan, and Aaron.
All of them have stayed out to open Ocean and the Gulf hasn’t given us anything. Now that doesn’t mean it can’t, we got a lot of October to go here and we can certainly get something to come out of the Gulf, but that’s your symptom. The problem is the Bermuda high is gone. There’s no pump. There’s no moisture out of the south.
So we watch the drought monitor in the span of six weeks, add on 27% area in. To the country, and most of it was in the Mid-South. It was in the Delta. It was in the Ohio River Valley. It was up and down the east coast. And that drought has been very problematic for the finish of this crop. We’ve heard a lot of growers saying that, Hey, my crop didn’t dry down.
It died down. And here we are looking for moisture and. The pattern just, I mean, it’s cruel. The forecasts are cruel for the lower Mississippi basin, right when the place where you are going over very dry for the month of October. So it’s a situation where we’ve shut off our moisture supply. The jet stream is way up in Canada, and I’ll be honest with you, Mike, what we need, we need a big cold front to come through and rip this all apart to get us set into a new pattern.
And I don’t have a big one coming anytime soon. There’s cooler air, but it’s not the monster that we need.
[00:03:30] Mike Howell: We’ll take some cooler air down here as well. We’re still getting hot, humid conditions. It’s August temperatures instead of 1st of October. Temperatures down here. Eric, we’ve talked a little bit, this is uh, about the third year in a row.
We’ve had a drought down here, and I know the midsection of the country has been experienced in droughts for the last few years. It may not be the exact same location may shift, but you take that middle part of the country. Is this something that’s setting up to be an ongoing thing, or is this just coincidence that the middle section of the country is getting hit so hard with these droughts?
[00:03:59] Eric Snodgrass: Well, the drought episodes in the last three years have been odd, right? So in spring of 23, the Bermuda high left, big, high pressure built up for Canada. Do you remember how much a Canada burned in 2023? Well, then we saw this huge spring drought, and then it stormed like mad in the middle and into summer in 2024.
We had plenty of rain during most of the growing season, and then a. Epic fall drought, and then now in 2025, plenty of rain at the beginning, in the middle, and then epic fall drought once again. I can say this about the river, the Mississippi River, I look back and eight outta the last 10 years, the Mississippi has found itself in late summer, early fall to be below its low stage at Memphis, which is a good gauge spot to look at ’cause it’s after the Ohio and the Missouri come into the Mississippi.
But here’s the reality, four outta the last five. Falls have had developing La Ninas, and generally speaking, this is not a guarantee, but generally speaking, when there’s cold water emerging along the Equatorial Pacific, it indicates stronger trade wind flow, which tends to take the jet stream, which we rely on for delivering storm systems.
It weakens it and pushes it north and gets real loopy. So you end up not having the consistency in the jet stream that you want. So long story short, Mike. Yeah, we felt like we have dealt with some level of drought at some point in the growing season for the last five years and the last two years, it’s been pretty epic, fall droughts.
But don’t forget, remember last fall it was dry, dry, dry, dry, dry. November gets here. Moisture just returns in a huge way, and that seems to be the way the atmosphere is doing things. It’s wanting to turn itself over and break its pattern in kind of a violent way rather than just ease of. Transition to a new season.
So is that gonna happen again this year? I think it will, but it’s just, is it mid-October that it happens or is it November? Or is it even later in the year as we get toward winter, which you and I are gonna talk about, I’m sure in a few minutes.
[00:05:46] Mike Howell: Well, Eric, before we get to that, let’s finish off this year’s crop.
You know, USDA came out couple of months ago with their forecast yield. For corn and soybeans. We have had a big number thrown out there. There was a lot of folks at that time thought that number may have been a little big, but how has the drought affected finishing off this crop? Do you think that’s gonna bring that number down a little bit?
Did we see that drought in the Midwest enough to affect these yields here on the tail end of the season?
[00:06:11] Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, I think we did. I think there’s another issue there too, and that was, we saw some, pretty much above average, but pretty high fungal pressure this year in the corn belt, especially Southern Rust Tar Spot and other things.
As we got later in the season, boy, they were just, and it was a hot, humid summer, so you end up getting that, I mean, you. Indianapolis, which is nearer to me than you. They had an extra 25 days when you compare to normal, an extra 25 days where the low temperatures were above 70. So those are hot, humid nights.
Well, we were curious what that did to the yield, but the USDA comes out with a monster number and then you go over dry August and September. And I’ll just tell you the farmers that I know around here, they’re saying that their soybeans were way below what their first estimates were, and the corn didn’t come in.
Great. Now. I’m in Illinois and I’m at one of those DST spots. So of course I’m hearing a lot of farmers around here say that. But I was talking to one of our guys over in Indiana who’s working on the HDInsights program. His name’s Nick, and Nick and I were saying the same thing, like, Hey, these guys in Indiana thought our yields were gonna be here.
And they’ve come off the top. Ohio’s taking a beating parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, very, very dry. It’s been the Western corn belt that probably had the most moisture to sustain them the longest, which is interesting because what have we seen for the last several years? It’s usually the. Eastern corn belt that’s been doing okay in the west has been struggling.
So I think that it did take the top end off of it, but we’re gonna start to see these numbers. As you know, the semis cross the scales, but will it make a dent into USDA’s numbers by January maybe. But Mike, by that time, we’ll be so focused on South America. It may not be that newsworthy of a story unless it really hits the global supply numbers.
[00:07:44] Mike Howell: Right, and we’ll go to South America before we finish today as well. But we’re starting off October. We’re October 2nd today as we record this, and Halloween’s coming up the end of the month. And we always look forward to Halloween here in the south because we know that the temperatures are gonna start breaking.
We wonder if we’re gonna get a cool night to go trick or treating with the kids. Sometimes it’s cool enough we have to put some stuff on under those. Trick or treat outfits and sometimes you just put on a costume and hope you don’t burn up out there. Trick or treating. Can you give us a Halloween outlook?
Are we gonna burn up trick or treating or is it gonna be bearable out there this year?
[00:08:17] Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, I’m going with bearable more than anything. It’s been funny. I’ve had Halloweens up here in Champaign, Illinois. We’ve had snow. And Ooh, those are brutal nights. And you just say, Hey kids, let’s go inside and sit by the fire.
I’ll just give you all the candy from my bowl. I don’t wanna go out in it, but we’ve been hot. So listen to this. The last 10 days of August and the first 10 days of September were setting, so that 20 day stretch, when you compare it to historical averages for that same 20 day stretch, it was record cold in the Midwest.
Cold down the Mississippi Basin. Then we turn the clock to the last 20 days of September, now the beginning of October, and now I’ve got most of the Midwest and a whole bunch of the Delta, not just having a top 10, but parts of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, South Dakota, North Dakota. It is the new number one warmest.
Last 20 days of September on record. So what a flip. Now we do see a cold front coming. There’s gonna be a cool down about five or six days after you and I record this. That’s gonna be nice, but is it gonna stay that way? Uh, I think we’re gonna get more regular intrusions of cooler air coming through as we get into the end of October and start the month of November.
How long is their duration? Ah, we’re too far out to say, but October, where you are, it’s usually just about right in terms of getting out, trick or treating. We often tend to struggle with a little bit too much cold here ’cause that’s about 15 days after our average first frost date in the Midwest. So we can get some pretty chilly halloweens around here.
But overall, I think we’re gonna get into a better situation, getting away from this heat the later in the month we go.
[00:09:49] Mike Howell: We could sure use a break from the heat down here. It’s been a long hot summer. I know you said it was a few degrees cooler in the end of August, the 1st of September. We didn’t notice it down here, Eric.
[00:09:59] Eric Snodgrass: You forgot, right? You’re like, what happened to that?
[00:10:03] Mike Howell: So after we get past Halloween, we start looking for that first frost down in our part of the world and start thinking about winter. What are you seeing in your long range outlook? What are our global patterns looking like that’s gonna affect our weather patterns this winter?
And I saw somebody doing some predicting a couple of months ago that said this could be a really bad winter. They were predicting ice storms as far south as I 10 from Texas across to Florida. That’s a pretty bold prediction, especially in August. So.
[00:10:28] Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, that’s bold. Maybe it was more click bait maybe to get your eyeballs on it than anything.
Unfortunately, we have a lot of meteorologists out there that like to go just hype everything. And I would just say this, every time you see some of those things, ah, just take ’em with a grain of salt because here’s the reality, Mike, if that person who gave you that forecast could skillfully and accurately predict big ice storms across the south, especially on I 10.
They knew about it in August. They’d be multimillionaires man. Like, can you imagine how much money? You know? And so by virtue of there being no super wealthy retired meteorologists that owned their own islands, we can’t do that. But what we’re looking at is this last winter we had a Laina building. This one we have another one.
Okay, so kind of a double dip on that. We were pretty warm in the North Pacific last year. We’ve got that too. The Atlantic was warm last year. Guess what? It’s warm this fall as well. There’s a feature over in the Indian Ocean. We call it the Indian Ocean dipole. It went negative last year. It’s going negative this year.
So should I be using last winter as a benchmark for 2025 and 26? I mean, climatologically using the stats? Sure, why not? Now remember last winter we got really, really cold, but not until January and that’s when the massive snowstorm hit I 10 this year. I’ll tell you the top thing I’ll be watching in addition to La Nina.
Because lemme tell you by the way, what Laina typically do. They make the Ohio River Valley, the spot for the ice in the snow, not the lower Mississippi River Valley. You tend to be drier during Laina winters, but just remember every one of ’em has a different flavor, and this one’s gonna be relatively weaker.
So the analogs on the weaker line Ninis, yeah, you tend to be cooler. You tend to have a colder than average winter, but you’re also typically drier down south. So I’m worried about the cotton belt when there is La Nina winters. The big thing I would be watching though, Mike, is the warm water that’s in the Gulf of Alaska.
Now, here’s the last thing I’ll say about it. If we get the water in the Gulf of Alaska to maintain its warmth, or if the bearing sea, which is up there between Alaska and Russia, it’s north of the Aleutian Islands, if that stays really, really warm, well you pack all the heat into Alaska. And guess what? If you have heat in Alaska, you don’t have heat in the central US East.
So it kind of just does this, you know, one side takes on the heat, the other side takes the cool. And now we’re talking about polar vortex disruptions. We’re talking about Miller a Storm Systems. Those are the ones you wanna look out for. Miller A, it’s named after a guy named Miller, run the Gulf Coast, go up the East coast and they’re the big nor’easters after they hit you guys with cold snow.
I watch out for Miller B Systems. They go across the Ohio Valley. We could be seeing a winter that looks something like that. But we don’t know when. I mean, it is October 2nd, man. Like I just think there’s risk of that happening this year. But I’m not gonna hype it up until we get there, but just don’t forget this, okay?
I was thinking about the blizzard that hit down in New Orleans last year. You’re gonna have a whole generation of children. Who will forever remember the blizzard of 2025, right? That hit in January and throughout the rest of their lives, like, oh man, when we were kids, we used to have big snows and the snow was up to here.
And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. You were just five years old and it was just this deep and it just doesn’t snow in New Orleans very often. But the memory of it is what you gotta think about. So often our perception of winter is the bigger factor than what actually happened. And to be honest, Mike, I don’t care about any of it.
All I care about is your first question. We’ve got 70% of the country in drought. What does that look like by April? That’s all I need to care about for winter in agriculture.
[00:13:55] Mike Howell: That’s exactly right. We’ve gotta have precipitation somewhere this winter to get these soil profiles built back up. It’ll be a long, tough summer next year if we don’t get the moisture back in these soils.
That’s the big question. Are we gonna get this soil rebuilt over the winter?
[00:14:08] Eric Snodgrass: We need to, and you’re a hundred percent right because six in 10 times that you have a very, very dry fall. In winter. I’m kinda holding the Mississippi Basin in my hands right here. Six in 10 times at that basin is dry through winter, so fall and winter.
You have spring and summer drought. Now four in 10 times you don’t spring rains recover, but it typically is a precursor for problems in the next year. So we need to see if we break it by late fall into winter, and then we go into 2026 with less to worry about in terms of water.
[00:14:38] Mike Howell: Okay, Eric? Well, let’s take a walk around the globe and see what’s going on in other parts of the world.
Everybody always likes to. See what these other markets are doing as far as weather. Let’s start in Europe. How are things looking over across the ocean there in Europe this year?
[00:14:51] Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, September was a bit dry, especially over toward Ukraine and the Russian wheat belt. But that’s not necessarily a problem.
They’re trying to harvest a crop. It’s just so they’re gonna get enough rain to get the winter wheat crop established, and I think they will. I, I’m not seeing any major concerns there. The rest of Europe had a really bumpy summer, but it wasn’t enough to like. Splash global news in the markets. Too much of the world was focused on the sheer size of the US crop.
But as we go into this winter, I think we’re gonna watch out for the polar, the vortex disruptions that can often hit the eastern side of Europe, dropping in really cold conditions, and if they don’t have enough snow cover on their wheat, and we always get into a situation where there’s a winter wheat.
Kill threat in that part of Russia and Ukraine, uh, predicting it today. Not possible, but I just think something to be on the lookout for, knowing that a lot of times these La Nina winters tend to just give us wildly varying temperatures rather than El Nina, which tend to give us more steady wintertime temperatures.
So I’ll be keeping an eye out on that going forward.
[00:15:47] Mike Howell: Another thing while we’re talking the European weather, we also like to pay attention to those temperatures. The colder it gets, the more natural gas they have to use over there to keep things warm, and that’s going to play a part in nitrogen fertilizer prices going into the spring.
The more natural gas they use, the more that price is going to go up. So we hope they have a warm winter. So the price of natural gas stays low and we can keep these fertilizer prices down. Uh, a lot of a lot of things depend on the weather.
[00:16:11] Eric Snodgrass: Unless you’re speculating in the natural gas market, right?
Unless you’re speculating in the natural gas market, then you’re like, bring on the cold, hit the East Coast, hit Europe and I’m gonna make some money. But we don’t do that at NEU Nutrien, of course, but it’s just, it’s amazing the number of people that ask me about weather forecasts. They almost always, this is ubiquitous, okay?
They almost always wish for someone else to have a problem so that they can reap the benefit of it. So there you go.
[00:16:36] Mike Howell: That’s exactly right. We don’t need a problem, but somebody else does. Yeah. Eric, we mentioned South America earlier. What’s happening in south of the equator these days?
[00:16:44] Eric Snodgrass: Well, at the end of September, there was no early monsoon coming into Brazil, but at the end of September, a cold front went all the way from Argentina.
Through Paraguay, Uruguay, right into the Serato in Brazil, and it dumped some rain. It was enough rain to bring the soil conditions up for some early planting in late September, there were about five, almost 6% planted by the end of September in mad Gross. So that’s the big producing state. Now that’s way ahead of the average and now the new fastest pace in the last five years.
Now they’re drier for the front half of October, but that’s not gonna be a. Problem for planting. In fact, the drier conditions mean they’re gonna get in there and get going. Most model forecasts bring the rains back in the third and fourth week of October, and if they verify and that actually occurs, then I think we’re gonna be seeing some very, very rapid last five years.
It’ll be the new top planting progress numbers for much of those Brazilian growing areas on soybeans. By the way, we’re talking about soybeans here now. If the rains don’t return by the end of October, then I think you’re gonna have problems with failed germination and they’re gonna have to do some replant.
And that happens every year. It’s just how big of an area is that going to be? But if you just went strictly off the models, they’re in two weeks of drier weather right now, which means rapid planting. If week three the rains come back, that crop will be at. Perfect start, which is going to be honestly not a good thing for us.
Markets we generally want in the United States for there to be delays in the planting of soybeans so that our markets have to cover the time difference. But if they are firing on all cylinders, that’s not gonna happen this year.
[00:18:09] Mike Howell: Yeah, Eric, just like you just said, we need something bad to happen somewhere else for our North American growers, and it looks like that may be a potential, but looks like if they’re getting started early and rain may be coming in, that may not be where we get our relief this year.
We always like to talk about Australia as well. I know they grow a lot of. Crops down that way. What’s going on in Australia this year?
[00:18:28] Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, so if you think about Australia, just remember it’s mostly across the whole of the south and then up the east coast where they have a lot of their crops. I just looked last night at some of the data, remember they do a lot of winter crops, so they’re now coming into spring and on the finish of that, they were in drought about six months ago across a lot of their growing area.
But then, gosh, their winter, which was July and August, brought in rain. And they’re in DVI values. That’s like satellite based health measurements are now near the top of the 20 year distribution, meaning that there’s a lot of happy, I think Australian farmers now, they’re gonna bank hard on La Nina because La Nina tend to give them the best chance at avoiding drought.
That’s the best way to say it. Not the best chance of being wet, but the best chance of avoiding drought. And so they’re gonna watch these next three to four months carefully to see if they can get into their summer without any major drought concerns. Building because as they start to think about their summer crops and then what they’re gonna be planting for next winter, they do not want to see major drought situations building in.
So Laina tends to be a good thing for those folks. And right now, I think most of them are pretty happy on the recent winter and early spring rains that they received.
[00:19:32] Mike Howell: Okay, good news for Australia. Eric, we’ve talked about an awful lot, and I know you know a lot more about the weather and what’s going on than I do.
Is there any other weather related issues that I haven’t picked up on yet that we need to go over today?
[00:19:43] Eric Snodgrass: I would just say this, a lot of the winter forecast, like the one that you talked about earlier, are gonna be built on the fact that a line is coming in. But as I said earlier. Line Nina all have different flavors.
Okay, last couple of big line Ninas. We had big snow droughts in the north, but they tended to load up pockets of the western mountains with good snow, like the Northern Sierra into the Central Rockies. I’m concerned that this line, Nina, is gonna have an entirely different setup to it, and I think that’s gonna force us to watch these sub seasonal weather events like the polar vortex disruption or big surges in the trough and rich pattern across the Atlantic or the North Pacific.
So I would just tell you this. Any bold forecast that goes out there and looks long at winter and tries to make a statement about the way winter’s going to show up, I would just take it with a grain of salt right now because we’re not really gonna be able to see how all this is gonna shake down until we fully get into the month of December.
So, Mike, please call me back in December. I’ll give you a white Christmas forecast and also have a better handle on, I think where this is all gonna go for our winter.
[00:20:42] Mike Howell: Eric, we’ll set that call up in December, and the only way you’re gonna give me a white Christmas forecast is if we don’t get this cotton pick before Christmas.
We’ll have other issues if we don’t get the cotton crop out before Christmas. Eric, we really appreciate you taking time to visit with us today. I know I always get a lot out of these sessions, our listeners do as well. Listeners, thank you for tuning in and if you will hang around for just a couple of moments.
We’ll be right back with segment two. Farming Isn’t Farming without Questions, and now there’s a place to go for answers. At economics, an entire team of agronomists is waiting and ready to help for free. No question is too big or too small. Visit Nutrien-ekonomics.com and submit your question with the ask an agronomist feature.
Listeners, welcome back for segment two where we’re visiting with another one of our agronomists, talking about an ask the agronomist question of the week. To help us do that, we’ve got Dr. Alan Blaylock back in the studio with us. Alan, welcome back.
[00:21:41] Alan Blaylock: Good to see you again, Mike. It’s always a pleasure to be here.
[00:21:44] Mike Howell: Alan, the days are getting shorter. We’re getting into fall. A lot of people are on the combines these days trying to get the crop out of the field and starting to think about putting out some fall fertilizer applications. Can you talk a little bit about p and k fertility? Can we safely put these out in the fall or is there a situation when we need to avoid putting these fertilizer products out in the fall?
[00:22:03] Alan Blaylock: Well, Mike, for the most part, P and K can be safely applied in the fall, and generally that works. Pretty well. There may be some conditions where we would want to save that application until spring. And obviously there can be key advantages to applying in the fall. The soil is often drier and not always, but it’s often drier in the fall after harvest.
We maybe have a bit more time in the spring. They’re always rushed. We, when the soil’s ready, we wanna get that crop planted, and maybe we don’t want to take the time to apply fertilizer in the spring. So there’s certain advantages to applying in the fall. And because p and K are considered to be immobile in the soil, that means they don’t move readily.
They can be retained in the soil and we can add them and they’ll still be there in the spring. Now, there are some considerations where that may not be suitable. Here’s an example, and you would be familiar with some of these conditions down in your area, Mike, if we have these very sandy soils that have low INE exchange capacity.
Potassium can leach from those. And remember, potassium is held in the soil because it’s an exchangeable cation. If we have a low cation exchange capacity, and that would occur in a sandy soil with low organic matter, potassium can be mobile and it can be leached from the soil if those conditions. Exist and we have those sandy soils, we should wait until spring to apply the potassium.
We don’t wanna put a fertilizer out there that’s not gonna be there come spring when the crop needs it. So let’s consider those soil conditions. Now, another example where we may want to hold off on the application is, let’s say for example, that. We’re gonna apply phosphorus and we’re no-till situation, which many growers are doing nowadays, and that phosphorus is going to be applied on the soil surface and it’s not gonna be incorporated in any way.
We have a good chunk of the country that gets some significant precipitation in the winter that’s not in the form of snow. Mind you. So we can have. Runoff from winter and early spring precipitation. If we have applied the phosphorus on the soil surface, it’s gonna be exposed to surface water flow and that phosphorus could be lost by runoff if we have, say, sloping conditions.
We’re not doing any incorporation, as I said, this is. Fairly common today, and we’re gonna leave that phosphorus on the surface. We might wanna reconsider that if we’re in an environment where that phosphorus could run off over winter, or even with spring thawing of snow. Some places we get rapid melt of the snow that’s on the soil and we get some runoff, and then the phosphorus can go with it.
We wanna consider. Those conditions. Now, if we’re going to be incorporating the fertilizer, well, we can prevent that runoff and increasing number of growers are using something called strip till where the p and k are going to be banded under where the crop is going to be planted the next year. So they’re going to be placed in the soil where they’re not going to run off.
They’re going to be very stable in that position, and they’ll be protected from loss. Probably the main consideration. In whether or not we’re going to apply in the fall or in the spring, is the potential for any of these kinds of losses run off or leaching or other losses of nutrients. We just want to avoid losing nutrients from the soil to the environment.
Now lastly, there’s one other condition, and this may be a bit less common, but there are cases where certain soils, because of their soil chemistry will. Fix or determinants, sometimes use tie up nutrients. They convert to chemical forms that are maybe less available to the plant. Like high pH soils are going to form calcium phosphates, and those calcium phosphates are less available, so the longer that phosphorous sitting in the soil and has time to react with other minerals, the more that could be tied up high pH soils.
Might be a good reason to apply the phosphorus in the spring closer to the time of plant uptake, so it has less time to become fixed or tied up in the soil. We can have some similar tie up with potassium. The mechanism’s quite a bit different, but we can have what’s called potassium fixation, where some of the potassium becomes unavailable as well. These are special soil considerations that we might want to think about and and growers obviously need a bit more information to determine, do I have those conditions? Is that something I need to worry about? That’s something that they may want to get in touch with us and ask for more detailed conditions. Where I would want to apply in spring instead of fall would be, do I have potential losses of those nutrients? Am I going to apply them on the surface where they can run off? Do I have soils that may fix or tie up those nutrients? These would be considerations to apply fertilizer in the spring rather than in the fall.
But generally speaking, p and K are fairly stable, and fall application is usually acceptable Practice. Mike, there is one other potential consideration that has been brought up in a number of meetings I’ve been to over the last year or two, and that is the potential for loss of the nitrogen that’s coming along with our phosphate like map or dap.
They have some nitrogen in them, DAP a bit more than map, but there is concern about over winter loss. Of this nitrogen that is accompanying the phosphorus and its potential impact on water quality runoff, gaseous losses. So this is something also that the growers might think about if they have the potential for loss of nitrogen over winter.
And because most of our phosphate fertilizers have nitrogen in them, we may want to consider applying the phosphate in the spring for that reason, independent of considerations for the phosphorus itself, we may want to consider the impact of. The loss of the nitrogen that’s contained in the phosphate.
[00:27:30] Mike Howell: Alan, great advice for these guys that are out on the combine now that give them something else to think about. Listeners, if you need any more information on anything that we’ve talked about today, you can always visit our website. That’s Nutrien-ekonomics.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with the Dirt.
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