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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.
[00:00:30] Mike Howell: Through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
[00:00:38] Mike Howell: Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to the Dirt. I’m not sure about where everybody else is in this growing season, but here at my house it is getting really hot. Corn is getting on up pretty tall. I have not seen any corn starting to tassel yet, but it won’t be very long. I understand that there’s still some corn that’s still being put in the ground, so a wide range of development.
[00:00:59] Mike Howell: at this time [00:01:00] of the year, but I thought we’d spend a few minutes today talking about nitrogen management in corn, and to help us do that, we’ve got Dr. Fabian Fernandez with the University of Minnesota with us today. Fabian, welcome to the Dirt.
[00:01:11] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Well, thank you, Mike. It’s great to be here.
[00:01:14] Mike Howell: Fabian, if you will, take just a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners.
[00:01:17] Mike Howell: Let ’em know what you do there in Minnesota.
[00:01:19] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, for sure. I am a professor in the Department of Soil, water and Climate at the University of Minnesota. I am located in the St. Paul campus, but I conduct research and I also have extension responsibilities across the state. So I have research projects all over the state, and I meet on a regular basis with a lot of corn growers across the state and the region.
[00:01:43] Mike Howell: Research, extension and teaching. Sounds like they’ve got you on a three for one deal, Fabian?
[00:01:48] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yes. I don’t teach any classes in the classroom per se, but I do have graduate students and so I am a mentor to graduate students that are getting their masters or PhD degrees. So yeah, it keeps [00:02:00] me busy for sure.
[00:02:01] Mike Howell: That’s good. Glad to have you on the show today, and I know you’ve done a lot of work with nitrogen management in corn, and that’s where we want to get to today. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about how the season’s going in Minnesota? Is all the corn planted there and how’s it progressing?
[00:02:16] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, so it’s kind of an interesting season. We started pretty good even in April, which is pretty early for us. We had a window around the middle of April where we could get some planting done, which is very unusual. Typically, we are looking at the end of April or early May for planting, and so we got some planting done.
[00:02:36] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Then it got cold, rainy in some parts, and then we started again in the first part of May. We basically had two days of spring, I feel like. This year we had a weekend of spring, and then it was like summer. It was like in the upper eighties. It felt like July weather. Now we are back into cold weather and rain, which is good because we actually needed rain.
[00:02:56] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: It was getting really dry. So we are getting some rain [00:03:00] and that’s helping. But of course it’s fairly cool. I mean, in some areas, in even lower thirties at night, most of the corn crop and even soybean crop has been planted or it’s. Definitely about a week ahead of a schedule compared to other seasons. So most of the planting has been done, but the growth has been pretty limited because of the cooler temperatures that we are experiencing right now.
[00:03:22] Mike Howell: Fabian, we had a little different situation here in the south. We were able to get our corn planted a little early, like you mentioned, and then we started getting heavy rainfall and a lot of these areas had. Eight to 10, maybe even as much as 15 inches of rainfall for a couple of week period there, and just really kept people from getting in the field.
[00:03:40] Mike Howell: And that corn grew and a lot of this corn was starting to show some signs of nitrogen deficiency. We just weren’t able to get these applications of nitrogen made in time and. I’ve heard some growers have went out with drones making drone applications and where they could, they were flying with aerial applicators trying to get some nitrogen on this corn because it was just too wet to get in the [00:04:00] field.
[00:04:00] Mike Howell: And I thought today would be great to talk about nitrogen management. We need this rain to make the crop, but it really makes managing nitrogen difficult sometimes. I saw a publication that you had put together. Over your career that you had learned four things about managing nitrogen, and I thought we would spend a little time talking about that today.
[00:04:18] Mike Howell: The first thing that you had mentioned there was talking about the value of spring applications of nitrogen. Can you talk a little bit about what you were talking about with the spring applications and why that is so important?
[00:04:28] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Like you said, Mike, I’ve spent quite a bit of my career working on nitrogen management, and over the years I’ve learned a few things that, uh, I share in that article.
[00:04:38] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: When we talk about nitrogen management, I always tell people that we are really and truly looking at risk management. Things that tend to work well year in and year out, or more often than not is where we need to be focused on because hardly ever, a hundred percent of the time we’ll see the results that we expect.
[00:04:57] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: But if we see them more consistent than [00:05:00] not, that’s where we need to be focused on. Because we are working with Mother Nature, there is nothing consistent about any growing season. We often talk about normal conditions, but the reality is that the normal conditions is the average of. A whole bunch of abnormal conditions that we have year in and year out, and we make an average.
[00:05:18] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: So when we look at nitrogen management, what I’ve seen pretty consistently is that spring applications tend to be the ones that work the best. Again, they’re not a hundred percent of the time, but they do work the best. And what I mean by that is that we all know nitrogen is expensive, and so we need to manage nitrogen to the best of our ability to make sure that we get a good return on the investment, that the application that we make
[00:05:43] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: helps us make yield. And then the other part too is the environmental concerns around nitrogen. We know that if we over apply nitrogen or we apply it at the wrong time or use the wrong source of nitrogen, we can stand to lose quite a bit of nitrogen. And that also creates [00:06:00] environmental concerns, which are of great importance.
[00:06:02] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And so the spring applications tend to be a good compromise between what we need to do to manage nitrogen. If we go too early, we have more chance of losing nitrogen. If we go too late, we could run into other issues where we may not have enough nitrogen for the crop. As you mentioned in some of the situations where you are the narrower the window of time between the time we apply nitrogen to when the crop needs it, the better it is because we reduce the potential for loss of that nitrogen.
[00:06:32] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: We normally talk about applying nitrogen early in the season. Pre-plant or early season applications work well for us, especially in Minnesota. We have soils with a lot of organic matter, and so there is mineralization that is taking place, so it’s providing some nitrogen and typically when you look at how much nitrogen the
[00:06:50] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: crop needs, it’s pretty small amount, early on, between the V four to V six leaf stage. You’re looking at about 10% of the total nitrogen or [00:07:00] about 20 pounds of nitrogen that, uh, corn crop needs. And so those needs are typically met by what’s in the soil. What is mineralized, and so we don’t really worry too much about having all the nitrogen ahead of the crop.
[00:07:14] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: The other thing too that I would mention is that even with pre-plant applications, which I like pre-plant applications, we also need to be looking at kind of the conditions we are in because like I say, every growing season, every spring is different. There are years where it’s really wet and even pre-plant application could result in some nitrogen loss, and so
[00:07:36] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: looking at the nitrogen source, for instance, that we use can be important. Just to give you an example, for instance, Mike, last growing season 2024 was an extremely wet spring for us. Even though we normally say urea applications work well for a pre-plant application. Last year the anhydrous ammonia was a much better option than urea because it takes longer for anhydrous ammonia [00:08:00] to nitrify and to be subject to nitrogen loss compared to urea.
[00:08:04] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: and so because of those wave conditions, we actually saw that anhydrous was a better option than urea. Again, that’s not the typical thing. Most years urea works pretty well, but we do need to be concerned or paying attention to the conditions every year.
[00:08:19] Mike Howell: Fabian, one thing that you touched on and kind of brushed over was you said you have high organic matter soils there.
[00:08:25] Mike Howell: Now this podcast is being broadcast all over the world. I know we have listeners from about 60 different countries that tune in. Not all of us have organic matter. Where I’m located here in South Mississippi, high organic matter for us is going to be somewhere around a half a percent organic matter. And we just can’t hold that nitrogen like you can up there.
[00:08:44] Mike Howell: How does that organic matter change if you don’t have organic matter helping with this system? Does that change your approach to nitrogen management early on?
[00:08:52] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, it definitely does. You would need some nitrogen. Again, the crop doesn’t need a lot of nitrogen, but it does need some nitrogen, and [00:09:00] so we do have, for instance, sandy soils
[00:09:02] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: here in Minnesota where we have very low organic matter. It’s actually more than what you mentioned is 1 to 2%, which for some folks, that’s a lot of organic matter. But yeah, when you have low organic matter, then having some nitrogen apply to help that crop get going is important. Now, if you have
[00:09:19] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Cconditions where the potential for nitrogen loss is high, my suggestion is to apply a small amount of nitrogen just to get the crop going, and then come back later and apply the additional nitrogen. If there are no potential for nitrogen loss or small potential for nitrogen loss, then by all means you could do the whole application pre-planned so that the crop has what it needs.
[00:09:42] Mike Howell: Right. And speaking of nitrogen loss, and we’ve talked a lot over the years about nitrogen loss and the forms of nitrogen loss. Fabian, do you recommend in these fields that you think you have a potential for loss? Do you recommend using any inhibitors or things like that to help prevent this nitrogen loss?
[00:09:57] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, so that’s a really good point. The [00:10:00] inhibitors, the nitrification inhibitors can really help slow down the process of nitrification. And why we talk about nitrification is because once nitrogen in the ammonium form is not going to be leaked or nitrify lost to the atmosphere. Once it’s in the nitrate form, that’s when we start to worry about leaching losses or denitrification losses, and so those nitrification inhibitors can definitely help.
[00:10:23] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: I find that nitrification inhibitors are most effective, or we get the more return on investment the earlier the application is done, then later. Some folks ask me for like a side-dress application or should they use a nitrification inhibitor, and I say, well. The nitrification inhibitor is not going to hurt, but it’s not going to really benefit you that much because what you want to use those inhibitors for since you’re paying money for them, is an insurance, is trying to protect that investment.
[00:10:53] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And so the more chance you’ll have to see a benefit from that inhibitor is with the earlier applications, just simply [00:11:00] because you have that larger window of time where nitrogen can be lost. And so protecting it during that time is more important.
[00:11:06] Mike Howell: Okay. Great advice there, Fabian. The second point that you talked about in the article was that some growers do elect to apply nitrogen in the fall, and I understand that it may not be the best time to apply it, but we also have to work around other crops and planting and harvesting different crops at the same time, and sometimes we just need to make some applications in the fall realizing that it may not be the best if somebody has to make nitrogen applications in the fall.
[00:11:32] Mike Howell: What are your recommendations for that?
[00:11:34] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, for sure. As you mentioned, Mike, there are some logistical and practical reasons why fall applications make sense. Sometimes, in my experience, it’s seldom better than a pre-planned application of everything else, the same, you know, same source, same amount of nitrogen, all that.
[00:11:51] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: What it comes down to, sometimes we say, well, logistically makes more sense, but I also tell farmers to work smart not hard because [00:12:00] the temptation is to apply nitrogen early, so it’s done. It’s done during the less busy time of the growing season. Typically, nitrogen even will be cheaper in the fall than it will be in the spring, and you have better distribution of labor and equipment, those kinds of things.
[00:12:15] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: But ultimately. If you have to redo everything again next spring, because you lose quite a bit of that nitrogen, then it doesn’t become any cost efficient or time efficient in any way, shape or form. In my experience, I would say if you have to do a fall application, there are a couple of things you keep in mind.
[00:12:32] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: One is that nitrogen source is very important. And the time of that fall application, waiting until soil temperatures are cooling down 50 degrees Fahrenheit or cooler 10 degrees Celsius or cooler is important because nitrification slows down at that point. But the other part is the source. We’ve done a lot of studies over the last 12, 15 years looking at anhydrous and urea.
[00:12:57] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Those are kind of the two major nitrogen sources [00:13:00] that we use in Minnesota, and what we found is that urea is just not a very good source for foul applications. If you are going to do a fall application of nitrogen, go with anhydrous ammonia. We looked at comparison of pre-plant urea versus fall urea, and we find consistently that you need a lot more nitrogen to produce lower yields with that fall application compared to a spring application.
[00:13:25] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: The other thing that we’ve looked at, for instance, is other nitrogen sources like ESN or urea apply in a band just to see if we can still use something aside from anhydrous ammonia in the fall and every time we find that those applications come short and anhydrous ammonia is really the only nitrogen source that I feel confident that that’s a better job.
[00:13:46] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And that said, of course, still, if we compare anhydrous ammonia in the fall versus the spring, I would say more often than not, the spring application will do better. This is just in case that, okay, you have to do a fall application. That’s [00:14:00] what I would go with is just an anhydrous ammonia as a nitrogen source.
[00:14:03] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Nothing else really compares. Everything else kind of falls short in terms of performance.
[00:14:09] Mike Howell: Right. And Fabian, in my world, we just don’t even consider a fall application. We know we would lose every bit of it, and I think you hit the nail right on the head. You said when the soil temperature is getting 50 degrees and falling and here in the south, we may not get to 50 degrees in some places if we do, it’s only gonna be for a couple of days.
[00:14:26] Mike Howell: So we can lose a lot of nitrogen here in the south, and we just don’t even consider making that fall application.
[00:14:32] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, and that’s exactly right Mike, and especially for this wider audience. This is Minnesota conditions where the soils freeze to depth and they stay frozen until about March, middle of March.
[00:14:44] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Compared to other places where the soils never freeze or where there is a lot of rain, you need to really be aware of those things. In most locations, that fall application ahead for a corn crop doesn’t work very well, and even in here in Minnesota, where again, it’s all freeze, there is [00:15:00] nothing happening in terms of nitrification or leaching or anything like that.
[00:15:04] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Even under those conditions, waiting until temperatures cool down and everything, we still stand to lose some nitrogen with fall applications compared to a spring application.
[00:15:14] Mike Howell: Well, Fabian, the next thing your article mentioned was split nitrogen applications. Tell our listeners what you recommend when it comes to making multiple applications and when we need to think about making split applications of nitrogen.
[00:15:26] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: So, again, speaking a little bit from my experience in Minnesota, we’ve looked at this question a lot over the last 12 years or so that I’ve been working here in Minnesota with pre-planned versus split applications, and what we find is that typically they make little difference with two exceptions. One is sandy soils.
[00:15:47] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: If you have sandy soils. Split application is a must. You have to do those split applications, and these will be the same for soils where you have high potential for nitrate leaching, or nitrogen [00:16:00] loss through denitrification, for instance. Those split applications will be much, much better. So in sandy soils,
[00:16:06] Dr. Fabian Fernandez:iIt’s a given. You have to do a split applications. In fact, when I started working here in Minnesota, first in sandy soils, I would apply half of my nitrogen pre-plant and then do the rest as side-dress and I learned pretty quickly that even that was too much. So now I actually have dial it to applying no nitrogen pre-plant in sandy soils, and applying the first dose of nitrogen around v two,
[00:16:29] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: so after the crop emerge, I would apply my first dose of nitrogen and then wait a little bit longer into the seasons to apply a second and third, even a fourth application. Those tend to work very well in sandy soils. The other situation is the fine texture soils that have poor drainage, and in those conditions, a split application could be beneficial if you have extremely conditions.
[00:16:55] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: In most years for what I experienced here in Minnesota, and we do have quite a bit of [00:17:00] precipitation in the spring, but if it’s not excessively wet, the pre-plant versus split applications actually work very well. Both of them perform about the same. It’s when you have really wet conditions and persistent wet conditions
[00:17:13] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: or soils that have very poor drainage and you don’t have enough subsurface drainage. You know, we install subsurface drainage in a lot of the fields in this part of the world to get rid of the excess water. If you don’t have that in place, you could stand to lose quite a bit of nitrogen with a pre-plant application.
[00:17:30] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: and so in those conditions, a split application could be of benefit. When I talk about pre-planned versus split application, the thing that I always remind folks about is that when we are applying split applications, the reason we do that is for risk management. You know, it’s a decision against nitrogen loss.
[00:17:48] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: If we apply pre-planned nitrogen and we lose it, then that’s a problem. With the split applications, though, we need to keep in mind that there are other kinds of risks associated with a split [00:18:00] application, and this is more for the fine texture soils where I’m not talking about sandy soils that are typically irrigated, where you have more flexibility in terms of when to apply nitrogen and how much, and all those kinds of things.
[00:18:13] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: But in fine texture soils that are rain fed, the potential risk of delaying an application of nitrogen is timing. I normally tell folks, if you’re going to side rest nitrogen, make sure that you do it between v four and v eight. Don’t wait much longer than that. And the reason for that is because if you delay, you run into a different kind of risk, right?
[00:18:37] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: The split application, as I mentioned, is a risk management decision, so we protect nitrogen from loss, but if you wait too long at the other end, if you have dry conditions later in the season, and this is kind of a typical thing that happens in a lot of places in the Midwest of the US, is that you apply nitrogen, but then there is not enough water for that application to move into the root zone, so the plants won’t really benefit [00:19:00] from that application.
[00:19:01] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And the other is, if we wait too long and the crop starts to starve for nitrogen, then you are reducing your yield potential. Yes, you will. Eventually, nitrogen will make it into the plant, but the yield potential is already set at that lower level. Those are the kinds of things that we need to keep in mind with the split applications.
[00:19:19] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: One thing that I always. Remind farmers about is the reason we do all of these things with nitrogen management is to make sure that there is nitrogen available for the crop. That the crop doesn’t really care if we are spoonfeeding nitrogen to it. What it cares is that there is nitrogen available, so if you spoon feed a crop
[00:19:38] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: it will have the nitrogen that it needs, but if you have low potential for nitrogen loss and you apply all of that nitrogen pre-plant or early or whatever, all of that nitrogen will be available for the crop, and the crop will be able to use it. So it’s not so much a spoonfeeding issue, it is just making sure that you have nitrogen available for that crop.
[00:19:58] Mike Howell: Right. And Fabian, the corn that I was [00:20:00] talking about when we began this podcast, you mentioned that v four to v eight stage is when you need to make that second application if you’re doing a split application, and that’s when our fields were so wet we weren’t able to get back in. That’s when we’re determining that yield.
[00:20:13] Mike Howell: And we are in a high nitrogen loss situation here in the south in most areas, and I’m scared that we sacrificed a little bit of yield just because we had so much water this year.
[00:20:23] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, and Mike, that’s certainly one of the issues. I mean, as we talked earlier, in the situations where you are at probably applying some nitrogen early in the season is very important because you don’t have much in terms of mineralization.
[00:20:36] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: The crop needs some nitrogen, but the risk is always there. Like you say, if you get really wet, you will probably losing some of that nitrogen and you’re probably sacrificing some of the yield potential if you cannot get in time to make that. Side race application. So even under ideal management decisions, you make the right decisions.
[00:20:55] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: You did everything correctly to the best of your ability. You’re still working with Mother [00:21:00] Nature. That sometimes throws a curve ball at you, and there is little that you can do about it.
[00:21:05] Mike Howell: Well, Fabian, the last point that was in your article was talking about drainage, and you’ve already mentioned drainage a little bit, but what do growers need to understand about drainage when it comes to nitrogen management?
[00:21:15] Mike Howell: And before you get into that, when I first started here in the Mississippi Delta, we talk about drainage and we’re talking about surface drainage. We’ve gotta be able to get the water off of these fields. As I’ve worked more in looking some different areas, I started learning more about subsurface drainage.
[00:21:29] Mike Howell: So which drainage are you talking about? Are both of them equally important?
[00:21:34] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Yeah, so both are equally important just because if you have standing water or too much water in the soil that prevents you from getting into the field to plant and to do all the activities that need to be done in the field.
[00:21:45] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And so, particularly in Minnesota, what we talk about is subsurface drainage. As I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of snow. Typically, we normally start the growing season with a full profile of water. The soil is at field capacity or [00:22:00] sometimes even a little bit of saturated conditions. And so having that subsurface drainage is important to move the excess water out of the field so that we can plant, and also for the soils to warm up, you know, it, it takes a lot more heat to warm up water than it takes to heat up air
[00:22:15] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: and so when you look at the soil, the porous space in the soil, soils are about 50% solid and 50% porous space, and that porous space is under the field conditions or under adequate moisture, it’s about 25% of that porous space will be water, and the other 25% will be air. When you have saturated conditions, of course you have more of that porous space with water, and so what we do with these subsurface drainage is not to suck up the water out of the soil profile.
[00:22:43] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: What it does, it just basically moves the excess water out very much like a sponge. If you think of a sponge that is completely full of water and you sit it there without doing anything to it, water will drip out of it. That’s the gravitational water or the water that cannot be held against the pool of gravity from that soil.[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: That’s the water that you move out of the soil with subsurface drainage, you don’t move out the rest of the water that is held by the soil. And that’s what we are talking about in here in terms of drainage in our soil, in the conditions here in Minnesota and much of the upper Midwest. When we talk about this drainage and nitrogen management, there is a very important reason why we do this drainage.
[00:23:21] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: First of all, as I mentioned, is being able to get in the field to plant the crops and do all the practices that, all the activities that need to be done in the field. The other part is in terms of crop development and nutrient availability. When you have a soil that is poorly drained, the roots probably are not going to grow very well.
[00:23:40] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: You could have disease issues, those kinds of things. And then the other part is in terms of nutrient utilization. If you have a shallow root, for instance, that root will not be able to tap into all the nutrients that are maybe deeper in the soil profile. So having adequate drainage is important to get the crop
[00:23:57] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: established. And then the other [00:24:00] part is, of course, is in terms of, again, if you have adequate amounts of organic matter, mineralization is important. It supplies quite a bit of nitrogen, but if you have poor drainage, mineralization can be slowed down. And so having adequate drainage helps with that part of the equation.
[00:24:17] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And then in terms of nitrogen loss, we talked quite a bit about nitrogen loss. This is kind of a catch 22, or you improve one thing while another one gets worse kind of situation. Because with subsurface drainage, what you do is you increase the amount of nitrate that could potentially leach out of the soil.
[00:24:36] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: You basically are creating a channel for excess water to move out, and if that water contains nitrate, nitrate will move with the water and it will exit the field into a ditch. That ends up in a river somewhere. That process speeds up the loss of nitrogen through leaching. But the flip side to that is that if you don’t have adequate drainage and you have saturated water conditions in that field, [00:25:00] you could lose nitrogen through the nitrification.
[00:25:02] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And so this is done by bacteria in the soil that thrive under anaerobic conditions when you have excess water. We have done some research looking at drain versus and drain conditions side by side, and what we have found is that you actually lose more nitrogen through denitrification with poorly drained soils than you do with adequate drainage, losing some of the nitrogen through leaching losses.
[00:25:28] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: And so overall the drainage is extremely important. It helps not only in terms of establishing the crop, but it also improves nitrogen use efficiency, and you actually need less nitrogen to produce the same amount of yield as you would under un-drained conditions.
[00:25:44] Mike Howell: Great advice there. Fabian, we’ve talked a lot about nitrogen and nitrogen management today.
[00:25:49] Mike Howell: Before we wrap up, do you have any closing comments, any take home message you want to leave our listeners with?
[00:25:54] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: The main thing is, as I always mention, nitrogen management is risk management, and [00:26:00] so you really need to be in tune with the conditions that you have in your field. People are listening to this
[00:26:05] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: podcast across the world and conditions are very different in different places, and so you have to be in tune with your conditions and figure out what are the most likely situations for your conditions and then manage based on that. Of course, as I we talked about earlier, we do work with Mother Nature and sometimes despite our best efforts, we may lose some nitrogen.
[00:26:28] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: We may not get the yields that we expect based on our best management. But again, we need to be looking at some of these things in terms of probability. What is the chance that this practice will more often than not, give me benefits and go for that? That’s the kind of the more secure aspect of what we need to be looking at.
[00:26:47] Dr. Fabian Fernandez: Knowing full well that there will be years that even the best practices may not get us exactly where we want to be.
[00:26:54] Mike Howell: Fabian, we really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to visit with us today. I’m sure our listeners got a [00:27:00] lot of valuable information from our conversation today. Listeners, thank you for tuning in this week.
[00:27:05] Mike Howell: And as always, I wanna remind you to hang around for just a couple of moments and 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 eKonomics, an entire team of agronomists is waiting and ready to help for free. No question is too big or too small.
[00:27:24] Mike Howell: Visit Nutrien eKonomics with a k.com and submit your question with the ask an agronomist feature.
[00:27:34] Lyle Cowell: Thanks again for having me, Mike, on The Dirt, and I really enjoyed this segment with these quick questions
[00:27:39] Mike Howell: from farmers in the field. Well, while today’s question has to do with forage production, our question today is what soil conditions support production of high quality forages? And what role does nitrogen play in forage production?
[00:27:52] Lyle Cowell: A good question. Like forages, right from where you work in southern states to up here in Canada, very important crop. Huge number of [00:28:00] acres. We never pay attention to them. They’re certainly the most under fertilized crop probably in the world and certainly where I sit. And they are highly responsive to fertilizers.
[00:28:10] Lyle Cowell: And in particular, often nitrogen fertilizer forges have tremendous production and we remove a lot from a forage field. We don’t just remove a little bit of seed, we remove that whole crop and sometimes repeatedly when we harvest and forges just inherently have huge biomass production. To do that, they need a lot of nutrients and nitrogen is often becomes deficient in these forage systems.
[00:28:35] Lyle Cowell: It’s important to the forage crop, not just in terms of yield. In terms of palatability of that forage. So a crop that has enough nitrogen, a forage crop with a nitrogen, enough nitrogen will have more protein. The forage material is easier for the animals to just graze and eat and digest, and it’s just better for the animals.
[00:28:56] Lyle Cowell: And another factor that I think that we often forget, especially [00:29:00] when we’re grazing that forage production in a pasture situation. Is that if animals are in a pasture paddock that has good forage production, perhaps because of nitrogen application, it means it’s less stressful to the animals. They don’t have to move around as much.
[00:29:16] Lyle Cowell: You might not have to load them up and move them off to the next pasture, and you gain production, not just because of higher pay. Production, higher pasture production, but also because the reduced stress to the animals. When the animals are moving around, they stop eating. When they’re moving around, they’re stressed.
[00:29:34] Lyle Cowell: So in the end, good fertilizer management on forages. And that is especially true with nitrogen. Fertilizer is important to the forage and it’s important to the animals eating that forage.
[00:29:45] Mike Howell: Great information LA the less steps that animal has to take during the day, the less of that forage. They’re gonna be working off, they’re exercising just like we are.
[00:29:52] Mike Howell: The fewer steps I have to take to get to the dinner table, the more weight I can gain. And I seem to do a great job doing that LA We appreciate you [00:30:00] taking time to visit with us today, listeners. Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode. And as always, if you need more information on anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website.
[00:30:09] Mike Howell: That’s nutrien-ekonomics.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with the Dirt. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, do us a favor and share this podcast with someone else. It could be your neighbor, your friend, your crop advisor, or whoever you think would enjoy it. Your support helps ensure future episodes, so please like, subscribe, share, and rate the show wherever you’re listening from.
