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Mike Howell (00:08):
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.
(00:41):
Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. We’re glad you’re tuning in with us today. I think we have got a really exciting episode coming. We’ve got two guests on with us today. We have got Dr. Alan Blaylock. He’s no stranger to The Dirt, but I’ll let him introduce himself again to some of those that are tuning in for the first time. Alan, welcome.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (00:59):
Thanks, Mike. It’s good to be here again. I’m senior agronomist with nutrient, and I’m based in Colorado and cover a variety of activities, but one of my main responsibilities is for much of the Western US, the Corn Belt, Great Plains.
Mike Howell (01:11):
And we’re also joined by Dr. Rob Mickelson. Rob has actually been on, uh, about a year or so ago. Rob from Edinburgh when we were at the World Sulfur Symposium there. Glad to have you back. And if you would, introduce yourself to our listeners.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (01:24):
Well, thanks Mike. I’m an old time soil scientist, and I’ve been around quite a while. I’m currently the director of agronomy for Yara in North America, primarily a nitrogen company. We’ve interacted with Alan and Mike for a long time, and although our companies might be competitors, we’re all in the same journey, to improve nutrient use efficiency and to help people use fertilizer the best way. So I interact with Mike and Alan on a regular basis, and we’re trying to help farmers be more efficient.
(01:53):
Glad to be here with you today, Mike, and talk about something I’ve been interested in for a long time, which is how did we get to where we are now in the fertilizer industry, and what’s that history, and what’s that journey been like, and what it might look like in the future?
Mike Howell (02:06):
Okay, Rob. Well, I appreciate that, and you did a great job introducing our topic for us today, so I’ll turn that question around and throw it right back to you. How did the fertilizer industry get started? When did people first realize that we needed nutrients for these crops?
Dr. Rob Mickelson (02:20):
We don’t even know when the first concept of soil fertility and plant nutrition got started. We have records from the Roman times that they were doing soil building practices, and we think it went beyond that, probably back to the Greeks in the recorded history. But many cultures have realized that having a good soil leads to good crops. They didn’t have the scientific understanding that we have until probably the 19th century even. But this has been on the minds of people for a long time. “How do I improve my soil so I can feed myself and feed the community?”
Dr. Alan Blaylock (02:54):
Good comments, Rob. And we think about ancient civilizations actually developed. People began to assemble and form communities in areas where they had good soil, where they could grow crops and feed themselves. And so, you see the development of these civilizations that Rob mentioned, the Egyptian civilization along the Nile River, which was replenished every year by flooding, bringing nutrient rich sediments from the mountains, bringing them downriver, depositing them on the floodplain, the area in what we know as Iraq, which was once called the Fertile Crescent, that Tigris and Euphrates Valleys where, as far as we know, a lot of our early agricultural practices and even some of our crops appear to have been developed. And so, these civilizations began to develop where they could grow crops and they recognized that good soil was important. And as Rob said, they may not have understood why, but they knew that good soil was important.
Mike Howell (03:49):
And y’all mentioned two important areas. They’re along the Nile River and the Tigers and Euphrates River, and we know that’s where a lot of agriculture began, people growing crops for food production. But one of the key words that’s always being thrown out today is sustainability. And I just don’t know how much more sustainable you could be. They’ve been growing crops since man first walked on the earth in those two regions, and they’re still growing crops there today, apparently, that we’re doing something right in agriculture if we can keep it going for that long.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (04:16):
Yeah, Mike, I think you’re right. We have a super long history of successful agricultural production, but I don’t wanna be complacent either and say, well, we’ve done all we need to do, ’cause I think all of us recognize there are still areas of improvement. And I know you often talk about the four Rs of the nutrient stewardship, but I think we just need to keep those at the top of our mind. How do we use those four Rs to do even better today than they did 1,000 or 2, or 3,000 years ago?
Mike Howell (04:44):
Rob, I appreciate you mentioning the four Rs, and I was going to get to that in a minute, but since you brought it up, we’ll go ahead and dive right into that. For our listeners that don’t know, you were with IP&I for a long time, and one of the leading people that helped develop the four R nutrient stewardship program. So if you would just remind our listeners a little bit about that program and what we need to think about when we’re talking about nutrient management.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (05:06):
Well, Mike, I always think everyone knows about the four Rs, but I still maybe a little bit discouraged when I come upon people that don’t know what that framework is, about how do we manage our nutrients most effectively? And so we boil that down into a real simple conceptual model of thinking about using the right source of fertilizer, putting it on at the right time, using the right rate, and then putting it in the right place. And if you get all four of those rights, which are the four Rs, the four rights, then we can go a long way in improving nutrient stewardship.
(05:40):
And interestingly, a paper came out recently, it was a review of world literature, and they were looking at what really makes a difference in improving nutrient efficiency. And they came down to, of all the things you could do, use the four Rs, and that’ll really make a difference in improving our nutrient use efficiency.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (05:58):
Mike, I’d like to add to Rob’s comments, and I think some of the key foundations of the four R program is that we use these practices, some people might refer to them as best management practices. But we’re using these practices with regard for all possible outcomes, not just the production of a crop, but with concern for its potential impact on the environment. How do these nutrients, when we apply them, interact with the environment, what effects may they have because we’re trying to maximize the beneficial effects of those nutrients while minimizing any impact on the environment. But also thinking about social impacts of being able to produce food, fiber, feed for animals, or even in our case today, a lot of our crops are used for fuel.
(06:47):
So it’s looking at the use of those nutrients with regard for their impact on all of those outcomes and integrating all of that together. And that can be very complex. The four R sound fairly simple in concept, but sometimes these natural systems are complex and unpredictable things can happen, so we’re trying to manage not just for the knowns, but sometimes for the unknowns, the unexpected things, the risks that might be there as well that we maybe don’t have control over, but there are things we can do to mitigate some of that risk through managing those four R’s.
Mike Howell (07:22):
I think that’s why all of us are working in the field we are, to help understand this system better and figure out new ways of doing things. We kind of joked earlier about how sustainable agriculture was, but it wouldn’t take long until we got to an unsustainable situation if we didn’t keep learning and keep applying the things we learned to everyday production.
(07:42):
How much potassium should you be applying? What’s the best form of nitrogen for sandy soils? Should you be applying sulfur? Sometimes you just gotta ask an agronomist. eKonomics has an entire team of agronomists ready to answer all of your questions for free. Find your answers with the Ask An Agronomist feature at Nutrien-eKonomics with a K dot com.
(08:04):
Let’s get back and get back into the history a little bit. We said that early on, people were recognizing the need for these nutrients. We know now that there’s, what, 17 essential nutrients for plant growth and development. That number tends to change a little bit depending on who you talk to these days. But when were these nutrients first discovered, and what maybe was the first nutrient that was discovered to be an essential plant nutrient? Alan, you’ve been around an awful long time. Which one was the first one?
Dr. Alan Blaylock (08:30):
Well, I don’t know, Mike, if I know exactly which was the first one, but phosphorus was certainly one of the elements that was observed early on to be essential. Now, some of the early scientists, and Rob said this, began to take shape in the 19th century. And actually, early in the 19th century, people began to recognize that there were certain components of the soil that promoted plant growth. And some people initially thought it was the water, and some people thought it was something else, but nonetheless, it was something in the soil.
(08:59):
And so, people identified carbon, they identified hydrogen, oxygen. Those are obviously key components structural elements of the plant. These 17 essential nutrients you talk about are what we call mineral nutrients that are supplied by the soil. But people began to recognize that there were certain components that the plant was getting from the soil, and kinda one by one, or maybe sometimes in groups, some of these specific chemical elements were identified and recognized that yes, they actually were essential to plants and phosphorus, as I mentioned, was one that was recognized very early, nitrogen certainly and potassium.
(09:38):
So this N, P and K that we talked about as our primary nutrients, while they’re certainly some of the earliest ones that were identified as being essential on others followed, and the most recent essential nutrient added to that list was nickel that was added about 20 years ago, I believe, maybe. But it was a progression over time, as we learned more and more about what the plant needed, and what the soil was doing, we learned more about all of those interactions, what was needed, how the plant was using it, what it was doing in the plant, how it got to the plant, and even how we could supply replacement of those nutrients to the soil to enrich the soil of the nutrients that had been removed in the crop.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (10:18):
So with the advent of modern chemistry, I think that’s what Alan is saying, really helped us advance our knowledge of plant nutrition. What are the nutrients in the soil, and how are they getting into the plant? We talked about phosphorus, and that was one that people knew that it was important, but getting into the plant was really impossible until they realized that they could use bones, which contain hydroxy appetite, contains a phosphorus mineral, doctor dissolve those minerals with acid. And the first commercial fertilizer was this single super phosphate, which was using bones and then adding sulfuric acid to partly dissolve that phosphorus, which wouldn’t dissolve otherwise.
(10:58):
So that really, I think, sparked the beginning of the modern fertilizer industry. Later on, they realized, “Hey, we can use rock phosphate, and it’s a very similar mineral, and we can react that with acid and get this single super phosphate again. And then shortly after that they realized that I guano, which is the dried bird poop found on the islands off of South America, was a very valuable nutrient source. Again, that contained nitrogen, which was missing, also contained phosphorus, maybe a little potassium. So the guano then really caused a craze of building soils and looking for these nutrients. It’s an interesting story with the guano by itself that actually that caused wars amongst some of the South American countries. And the US Navy was dispatched to look for these guano islands.
(11:47):
And we also got involved in some of these guano wars because that guano was so valuable as a plant nutrient source. So really some interesting history and politics and even warfare revolving around how do we get these nutrients that are so important for crop production.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (12:04):
And to add to that, this comes back to a phrase that we use today called food security. People were recognizing that they needed these plant nutrients to feed their peoples, countries, rulers of countries were recognizing the importance of plant nutrients in their ability to produce food for their people. And so, these became very strategic assets to acquire. When someone found a guano island, they fought to protect it. And the same is true today. We’re not necessarily going to war over plant nutrients, but people of the world today are recognizing the importance of plant nutrients or fertilizers to food security and the ability to feed people.
(12:47):
And you look at these highly populous countries like China, India, even North America and the US, and, and the development in Africa, the the tribal battles over getting nutrients to their people, to the farmers of their people. And we’ve really recognized over these last couple centuries how important those nutrients are in this concept of food security.
Mike Howell (13:09):
So you’ve both mentioned guano, and the wars that were fought over that, and the importance of that. You mentioned that that’s on some islands. How in the world did we get that guano from those islands up here to the United States so a farmer could put it out on his crop? Seems like that’s quite an impossible mission.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (13:25):
Oh, Mike, it was horrific conditions. The guano was deposited because there’s so little rainfall. The birds would scavenge fish. They would come and either nest or rook on these islands, and all the bird poop would be on these islands, but there was so little rain that it wouldn’t wash away like it does in most places. So they’re very dry islands. So they would send workers out there to pick away with a shovel and a pick and a rake to mine these big mountains of guano and put them on board a ship. So it was dusty and hot, and the description of the conditions there was just horrific, but it was so valuable they could pay or induce people to go out there and work. But very hard conditions to mine that guano.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (14:10):
Somehow, I don’t think that would be an OSHA approved method of getting fertilizer today. I can just imagine the smell and the dust that’s coming up in your nose gotta be some terrible working conditions.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (14:21):
Well, Mike, maybe going on from guano, they now had a phosphorus supply using rock phosphate and adding acid to make the single super phosphate. But the nutrient we use even more than phosphorus is nitrogen. And there was no source of phosphorus beside these small guano deposits and a few different things they could use. They were using blood from the slaughterhouses, they were using fish. It’s sort of famous in North America that the Native Americans would put a little fish in the hole and plant their crops. But you had to be right by the ocean to do that. You couldn’t transport fish very far. And that fish was a valuable resource.
(14:58):
So that wasn’t a very scalable solution to providing nitrogen. So in early 1900s, there was a famous scientist, William Crooks, who was in charge of the British Scientific Society, and he said, “The world is on the brink of famine, if we can’t come up with a way to provide nitrogen. We have reached maximum carrying capacity of the world, and we are in trouble.” So that was early 1900s. And so we had phosphorus, but we had no source of nitrogen. So Alan, maybe you can talk about what happened in the nitrogen industry that changed the trajectory of the whole world.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (15:31):
Well, a couple of German scientists got together, a man named Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber. Carl Bosch was working for a company that we still know today, BASF. Fritz Haber had discovered or was in the process of discovering this process of how to take nitrogen gas from the air and convert it to something that’s biologically active. The air that we breathe is about 78% nitrogen, but it’s in a form that’s biologically not available to us or to plants, to most plants. And they were looking for a way to convert it to a reactive form of nitrogen. And so, Fritz Haber discovered this process, and he won a Nobel Peace Prize for that reaction, and learning how to split that nitrogen atom taken from the air and react it with hydrogen and make ammonia. And that ammonia molecule is widely used in all kinds of things today. It’s not just as a plant nutrient, but it’s highly valuable in industrial processes and used for many different purposes wherever a source of nitrogen is needed.
(16:33):
So Fritz Haber found this process. He was working with Carl Bosch. And Carl Bosch was credited with commercializing, taking that up to a commercial scale. And that resulted in this what we might call industrial production of nitrogen, where they now could produce a reactive form of nitrogen that could be used for fertilizer and a variety of other things, including ammunition for the war. And these guys were in Germany, there was… World War I was just beginning. So they were also looking for material for munitions. So this was a very important discovery. And there have been a number of sociologists, economists around the world who have called this one of the most important, most significant discoveries in the history of mankind because it now allowed the production of that essential nutrient that was deficiency of which was threatening to thrust the world into mass starvation, now could be produced abundantly, economically, and transported to where it was needed.
(17:33):
So that really kind started the development of this, what we sometimes today call industrial fertilizer production and scaling that up and making it available to people all over the world, really. And that process has had an impact on the human population ever since. And because it so greatly increased the productivity of our lands, replenishing this valuable nutrient that was being depleted for which we didn’t have a lot of other good sources naturally, and now it’s readily available and greatly increased the production of food. And in a lot of ways, led to a bit of an exodus of people off the farm because farmers could be so much more productive, and people began to go to the cities to work in industrial jobs. This was the beginning of the industrial revolution, and fertilizer was part of that and contributed to that. It has had a far-reaching impact on the human condition throughout the world.
Mike Howell (18:27):
Alan, on one of our very first episodes, we had Hunter Frame on talking about nitrogen, and he gave a statistic, and I don’t remember the exact number, but you wouldn’t believe the amount of protein that people are consuming that are directly tied back to the Haber-Bosch process. I think he gave a number of about 85 or 90% of protein is tied back to the Haber-Bosch process, pretty important deal.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (18:49):
Maybe circling back just a little bit too, Mike, is we talked about sustainability as we started this conversation. And with any good thing, you can get too much. And so the nitrogen fertilizer industry is under some scrutiny now to use less nitrogen in the environment. So it’s been such a miracle that Alan described how it just revolutionized agriculture. At least they say half of the food that’s produced in the world now is due to nitrogen fertilizer, meaning it would have half of the food that we have now if we didn’t have fertilizer. But you can overdo it. And so, I think our challenge in the future is how do we become wise stewards of this miracle compound?
Mike Howell (19:31):
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(19:47):
So we understand that we now have a process to produce nitrogen. And, and Alan mentioned that this was about the time of World War I, and we know that nitrogen was used for the production of munitions and weapons and that type of stuff. There was an organization that was developed, I guess it was a government organization at the time, Rob, the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority. Can you talk a little bit about the TVA and the significance it had, and maybe lead on into what it does today?
Dr. Rob Mickelson (20:12):
I had the privilege of working there for a number of years, right outta school, so I am very familiar with that. Before the Haber-Bosch process came to the world, they had it in Germany, and that was actually part of the peace treaty. After the war was over, they said, “You must share this technology with the rest of the world.” And so, previously they had been small scale production of nitrogen in the Niagara Falls using electricity, and also in this big dam on the Tennessee River in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. And they were producing what we would call it now, green ammonia using electricity.
(20:48):
So after the war was over, the US government had this big bomb-making factory to make nitrates in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. So when the depression came along, they realized that affordable food should be an important part of the national policy. And Alan talked about food security a little bit earlier, and they had realized that accessible fertilizer is going to be an important part of that national strategy. So they said, “Let’s turn this bomb factory into a national research center on fertilizer.” And so, they developed what was called the National Fertilizer Development Center in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. From there, they hired engineers, and chemists, and economists, and agronomists, and environmental scientists, and transportation experts, and everything you can think about related to the fertilizer industry.
(21:34):
They came together there at Muscle Shoals and developed the modern fertilizer industry. And they estimate, I don’t know the exact number now, but between 70 and 80% of the fertilizers that we use today were developed from this government program. In the 1980s, a side organization was split off called the International Fertilizer Development Center, IFDC, and that was built across the road from the National Fertilizer Center. And that still exists today. But in the 90s, the government said, “You know, we’ve probably done all the fertilizer development that’s ever going to be needed, so let’s shut this down.” And in my opinion, that was a bit shortsighted, but the government budgets go up and down. And that was during a time when the budgets were down, and that central was closed. So that research is no longer being done. But the International Fertilizer Development Center continues on to this day, but a great legacy that came from that TVA program of the fertilizer center.
Mike Howell (22:30):
Guys, we’ve talked a lot about nitrogen and phosphate and some of the early sources and how those products were developed and commercialized. Uh, we haven’t talked a lot about potash. What were some of the early sources of potash, and how did the potash industry get started?
Dr. Alan Blaylock (22:43):
Well, Mike, one of the sources of potash that was used a lot early on was potassium carbonate that came from ash, hence the term potash. And they cut and cleared forests and burned the wood and collected the ashes. And there were people who, in the early colonization of the United States, made some income off of cutting those forests, burning them, and sending the ash back to Europe where it was in high demand. They had recognized the need for potassium fertilizer. It was also the discovery of salts in some of the brines of some of the saline lakes. And we still gather potash from some of those today.
(23:25):
There are salt deposits in the Sandhills of Nebraska that were exploited and evaporating those brines. Today, we harvest salts out of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and those brines are dried down and different minerals separated out of that. So some of those were some of the early sources of potassium fertilizer because they discovered these salts that contained potassium. And then, we began to discover underground deposits. And one of the largest deposits in the world in Saskatchewan was discovered while they were searching for oil and gas in Western Canada. And they found these potassium minerals that also very large deposits in Germany, in Russia, other places around the world. And many of those are still in production today. But that began the process of underground mining.
(24:09):
And most of our potash today comes from these rich deposits that are underground. They’re ancient seas that have been subducted, I guess, and buried underground and very rich in potash are often found with other salts in combination. But those are a rich sources of potash today, and some of them are several thousand feet underground. So it is deep underground mining and obviously there are complications with that. But very rich deposits that will last us for for many, many years. Those are brought to the surface. The potassium salts are separated from what other salts, and bits of clay that may be in there as well. Potassium separated out. It’s refined, it’s screened and graded into a form that can be easily used. It’s highly concentrated, can be economically transported.
(24:56):
And those potash deposits or those potash fertilizers are now shipped all around the world by those potash producing countries and continue to find new deposits in various places around the world. But still, the predominant sources are Saskatchewan, Canada, Russia, and still some coming from Germany, and the country of Belarus. These are the primary potash producers in the world today. Although there are other sources around the world that we find in harvest.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (25:23):
Alan, you’re much more experienced at potash than I am, but I had the opportunity to visit a nutrient mine in Western Canada. You go down in this big shaft down a half a mile, you see this equipment in this underground city, and then they’re moving this mineral back to the surface. Then it has to be cleaned, and separated, and crushed, and sized, and transported. And I’m just… You know, we complain often about the price of fertilizer, and I just thought, “How does this ever happen? And how is it as affordable as it is?” Because it is one of those modern miracles too, that mining production. So really an impressive operation.
Mike Howell (25:59):
It is quite impressive. Rob and I agree with you totally. How in the world can we do this economically and make it something that a farmer can afford to buy? But if you ever get the chance to go down in one of these potash mines, don’t pass that opportunity up. You’ll never forget that experience. Alan, I think you had something else to add.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (26:16):
Yeah, I was just gonna add that I described the processing of this very simply, but that potash ore is brought to the surface and processed. It goes through repeated washings, and screenings, and drying, and washing, and screening, and drying, and to remove the impurities and get all of that out so that we have a nearly pure potassium fertilizer. Most of it’s potassium chloride, but there are some other minerals like potassium, magnesium sulfate, which is mined in New Mexico and a few other places. And the process of processing the brines from like the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea in Israel is very much the same. That cleaning and screening and grading process, very much the same once we get that ore to the surface.
(26:59):
But it does go through a pretty elaborate process of preparation before it’s really in the form we want to use as fertilizer. And remembering that these potassium chlorides are often found naturally with sodium chloride, well, we don’t really want to apply sodium chloride to the soil. Sodium’s really an undesirable element in a lot of our soils, so we want to make sure we remove that. So that’s one of the complexities of this processing under which these potash fertilizers are prepared.
Mike Howell (27:27):
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(27:50):
Guys, one thing that we have not spent much time at all talking about on The Dirt is the use of manure for fertilization. Now, we talked about guano earlier, but would one of you care to talk a little bit about manure? And when I’m talking about manure, we have a lot of chicken manure around here. We get manure from the dairy industry. I know up in the Midwest there’s a lot of hog production and getting that hog manure and using that as a source of fertilizer. Talk a little bit about the manure process and how that all developed, and maybe some of the pros and cons of using manure as a fertilizer.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (28:18):
Manure is a great nutrient source, and we should always use it when it’s available. There’s a concept called an integrated nutrient management that’s adopted around the world where you use the best of whatever nutrient sources you have. If you have manure, then you use that and then supplement it with whatever you might need in mineral fertilizer. So this is not a is manure good or bad or is fertilizer good or bad? You use whatever is appropriate and whatever you have. But there are some serious limitations to manure, partly, often the ratios of nutrients are really not what the crop or the soil needs, so that we don’t always have balanced nutrition when we use manure.
(28:59):
Another thing I like to challenge people about, where did those nutrients come from that’s in the manure. Did the cow make that phosphorus? Did the cow make that nitrogen? No, they consume that feed from one field, change it into manure, and then we move it to another field. So manure never really adds any new nutrients, it just helps us move it around a little bit. So think about, you know, are we really building soil fertility, or are we robbing it from one field and then putting it somewhere else? But the organic matter can be valuable for building soil health and building soil properties. So I never wanna make it a battle between manure and inorganic fertilizer. There’s an appropriate place for both.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (29:40):
I’ll add some comments to that. And I agree wholeheartedly with Rob’s statements. Manure is a really valuable nutrient. One of our great challenges in our modern agriculture is animal production has become more and more concentrated. And as Rob mentioned, that the nutrients in that manure came from the feed the animals ate. And that feed came from crops that were grown. Those crops extracted nutrients from the soil. We grew grain or silage or hay or some kind of feed for the animals. And that feed then was transported away from the farm where it was produced. The animals consumed that feed, and then manure is produced sometimes hundreds of miles from where the grain was produced.
(30:23):
And so, one of our great challenges is getting those nutrients back to the land where it’s needed. And there are obviously practical and economic reasons why this is so difficult because the concentration of nutrients in the manure is generally quite low, so we’re transporting a lot of organic material, which is great. We need to add that organic material back to the soil. It’s a really valuable resource. What that manure may only contain a few percent nitrogen or a few percent phosphorous of potassium. So the eKonomics of transporting that are not very favorable, and sometimes it may be in a wet form or liquid form, and then we’re transporting a lot of water.
(31:01):
So this is one of our challenges we have to, we have to figure out. Now, some people have challenged agriculture. Well, the problem is that you’ve concentrated all the animal production. Well, there are economic and logistical, and practical reasons why that has taken place. And some people blame it on government programs and all that, but I don’t want to get into the politics of that.
(31:20):
Centuries ago, the animals and the people were all together in the same place, and the food was consumed on the farm. The animals were produced on the farm. They ate the feed that was consumed on the farm and the manure was deposited back on that farm. And so that cycle was fairly tight. Today, it’s very much dissected, and we separated the production from the deposition of the manure and these nutrient sources and created some of this difficulty. And this is the case, not just with manure, but other materials that contain plant nutrients that may be byproducts or waste products from some other industry where they contain nutrients that are a valuable resource that need to get back to the land where those nutrients are needed. This remains one of the challenges that we have talked about for the future of the plant nutrient industry and plant nutrition, understanding how we can better use these nutrients, how we can take advantage of them.
(32:12):
Perhaps someone will come up with a process for concentrating those nutrients in a better way that makes them more practical to transport long distances. But that is a challenge we have to solve in our industry for the future, for proper stewardship and long-term sustainability. For those out there are listening who may be entrepreneurs or inventors or engineers and have ideas on that, we need your help to solve this problem because it’s a significant challenge.
Mike Howell (32:38):
Well, Alan, you’re kinda leading me into my last point that I wanted to get your opinion on today. We’re quickly running outta time. This episode’s gonna be a little longer than normal, but I think with the content, I think our listeners won’t mind that a bit. The last question, and this is gonna be for both of y’all. If you would just take a few minutes and share your vision for the future. What challenges are facing the fertilizer industry, and what opportunities are out there for the fertilizer industry?
Dr. Alan Blaylock (33:03):
I’ll take a shot at that. I think as we look back at, say, the last 50 years or so, there’s been dramatic change in the fertilizer industry. We’re still using virtually the same fertilizer production processes. We’re still using the same nutrient sources. And there’s a good reason for that because those are excellent materials there, very economical to produce, they’re economical to use. But one of the things that’s happened is this industry has consolidated a great deal where there used to be many small companies scattered all over the face of the country, North America specifically. And many of those have been consolidated into large multinational companies.
(33:41):
The fertilizer industry has been greatly globalized, meaning that now we can’t just look at local drivers for supply and demand. We have to look at the global picture and the competition among global entities. And that creates some economic challenges because our local markets may be influenced by global factors that are beyond our control. And so, we have to learn to manage those eKonomics as well. I don’t think that process is going to reverse, although the USDA has recently given some fairly large grants to startup companies to encourage development of local nutrient sources. And that’s great, to encourage that entrepreneurship and the development of other nutrient sources and maybe new ways of doing things.
(34:26):
I think some of the challenges we have, we’ve alluded to already in terms of sustainability and wise use of these nutrients becoming more and more efficient with the nutrient sources we have. And that’s a challenge that will continue. We need to do better where there are opportunities to improve. I think in our North American agriculture, we are doing a great job and many of our farmers are highly efficient in their nutrient use, but I think there are areas for improvement, and our scientists continue to work on those things.
(34:53):
We continue to explore new sources of nutrients or maybe new technology for delivering nutrients and, and using them more efficiently, getting them in the right place, so to speak, or at the right rate. Identifying that optimum rate is still a challenge and being able to refine that. So these are some of the things, I think, we’re facing in the future, but I think there is great technology being brought to bear. We have advanced so much just in the last 10 to 20 years in not just the fertilizer technology itself because there are new solutions, new forms of nutrients being brought to the market. So we’ve advanced there, but we’ve also advanced maybe even more in how we deliver nutrients and how we predict what is needed and where it is needed.
(35:37):
And I think with artificial intelligence and its ability to analyze large amounts of data, ’cause we’re collecting large amounts of data now that can give us so much information. I think there are tremendous technological opportunities for new fertilizer forms perhaps, but also new ways of delivering and understanding how to implement those for our practices in a better way.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (36:01):
Well, I shouldn’t have let Alan go first ’cause he talked about a lot of the things that I foresee in the future. And I think our mindsets have changed in my career. We didn’t talk about sustainability, we didn’t talk about soil health, we didn’t talk about regenerative practices, and those are all the rage now. So we’re being asked to address different issues perhaps in, when the three of us started our career. So we’re looking at some of the same issues but in a little different way. Maybe just to add on a little bit to what Alan was talking about, he talked about new products, and we’re being challenged to address water quality. We’re being challenged to address greenhouse gas emissions from farms.
(36:46):
So we’re looking at a whole new range of issues that we haven’t addressed adequately before. One of the exciting things is our better understanding of soil biology and our understanding of this… We call it the microbiome, all the little critters that live in the soil in association with the roots. It’s just amazing what we’re learning there and how we can make those plants more efficient. And the plant breeders are making a lot of progress as well to get more of those nutrients into the plant and make them more resilient in stressful conditions so they can keep taking up nutrients even when the environment is pretty tough. Alan mentioned AI, and I think another thing that’ll be helpful is if we improve our weather forecasting, boy, that’ll make a big difference. I know much of the country has suffered from excessive rainfall this year.
(37:35):
I know the places where the nitrogen that was applied following best management practices has been washed below the root zone now, as we have better weather forecast and we can say, “Well, maybe we should hold back some of that nitrogen because it looks like it’s going to be a rainy season ahead.” Better weather forecasting would really help us a lot. Thinking about something else that’s going to be different as some accountability on what are the environmental impacts of that nutrient use. And that includes having some traceability on where did your fertilizer come from? How did you use it? And where did your crop go? Many of the major food-producing companies are now wanting to know the carbon footprint of that produce.
(38:17):
How were those almonds produced that went into that almond joy, or that candy bar, or that granola bar? Were those almonds produced sustainably? Were they produced with a low carbon footprint? So the farmers are being asked to address issues they haven’t before, and fertilizers and nutrients are a major part of that. So I see this is a really exciting time for young people to get into agriculture. There are so many opportunities, the field is changing so much, and I think these are essential questions that we address because they impact the whole human family. And if we don’t get this right, we’re gonna be in trouble.
Dr. Alan Blaylock (38:55):
Rob, I’m glad you mentioned that exciting time, and our young people. I often get a chance to talk to students, graduate students as our paths cross. I encourage them to look at agriculture for careers. And, you know, in the past a lot of people thought agriculture, that’s farming. I don’t really want to do that. I want to be in computer science, or I want to be in business management. But boy, there are a host of wonderful jobs. Agriculture is a fantastic career, and there’s so many exciting things happening, whether it’s engineering or biology or chemistry or physics or business management, or computer science. And, you know, computer technology is being used everywhere in agriculture. As we look at autonomous vehicles working in agriculture and equipment, there are careers in just about any kind of discipline you want. And there are good paying jobs in agriculture with exciting developments happening all over the world.
(39:54):
And Rob and I are both, we could say in the twilights of our careers, but we’ve seen great change. But we also know that there are a lot of people in our industry that are moving on in their careers and we need bright young minds to come and replace us and take on these challenges. And so, I just put down an appeal to any of you that have an interest in any of these kind of sciences or disciplines you can find a home in agriculture with some exciting things going on around you. Thanks for giving me a minute for that plug, Mike.
Mike Howell (40:25):
Well guys, I really appreciate you taking time to go through the history of fertilizer and I guess I was a little remiss in our introduction today. I did not reference the paper that the two of you put together or the series of papers. Rob, if you will tell us a little bit about the series of three papers that y’all have recently published and where listeners can go to get more information about those.
Dr. Rob Mickelson (40:46):
Sure, Mike. There’s a magazine that’s published by the American Society of Agronomy, and the magazine is focused primarily at crop advisors, and the magazine is called Crop & Soils. And it has a variety of different topics that are timely to help crop advisors stay current in the latest technology and agronomic practices around North America. Alan and I were approached to help crop advisors understand what is the history and the development of the modern fertilizer industry. All these crop advisors are busy making recommendations on different things, but where does it come from? So Alan and I wrote a series of three articles. One is the history that we’ve talked about today, Mike. The second article was about the present state of the industry, primarily in North America, but globally. And then the third paper is focused more on Alan and I speculating on what the future might bring.
(41:36):
We didn’t have a crystal ball, but we just came up with some things we thought would be important for crop advisors to be aware of. That article is available at this Crop & Soils magazine website sponsored by the American Society of Agronomy.
Mike Howell (41:49):
Well, gentlemen, once again, thanks for your time today. And listeners, if you need more information, you can always visit our website. That’s Nutrien-eKonomics with a K dot com, and you can find a link to these three papers there as well. Wanna remind everyone to hang around for segment two that will begin here in just a couple of minutes.
(42:08):
Listeners, I hope you enjoyed the first segment of today’s show. If you did, please take a minute and give us a rating on your favorite podcast channel or app and give us some feedback as well. We want to hear from you to help make the show even better. And don’t keep it to yourself. Please share these episodes with coworkers, family, friends, anyone you think may benefit from the information we’re sharing here. Don’t forget to visit our website, Nutrien-eKonomics with a K dot com to help find the latest crop nutrition news and research information as well as market updates, a growing degree day calculator, a nutrient use calculator, a rainfall tracker, and much, much more. It’s all at Nutrien-eKonomics with a k dot com. Most episodes of The Dirt are now available for CCA credits. Visit our website and click on the agronomics tab to find these CCA credit opportunities. And if you have a question you can ask one of our agronomy team members. Simply ask your question and one of us will get back with you. Thanks for listening. Now segment two of The Dirt.
(43:16):
Well listeners, welcome back to segment two. Glad you’re sticking around for these segments where we’re spotlighting research farms associated with our land grant universities across North America. Today, we are traveling to the state of Wisconsin. We have Mike Peters with us today. Mike, welcome to The Dirt.
Mike Peters (43:32):
Hey, Mike. Thanks so much for having me today on The Dirt Podcast. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Mike Howell (43:36):
Mike, before we really get into it, if you would take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and tell them what you do there at the University of Wisconsin.
Mike Peters (43:43):
I am blessed to be the director of the agricultural research stations for University of Wisconsin-Madison. Working for Bucky Badger, I have the privilege of overseeing 12 units across the state of Wisconsin that represent the diversity of soil types and the agricultural diversity of Wisconsin, as well as a greenhouse operation on our main campus where we work on plant breeding and trying to make sure that we’re setting our agricultural producers of the United States and internationally up for success.
Mike Howell (44:14):
Okay. And we understand the importance of these research farms, and we’ve talked a lot about that over the year. Mike, if you will, give us a little history about the research farms there in Wisconsin.
Mike Peters (44:24):
As I mentioned, there are 12 different sites across the state of Wisconsin. And the history of our research stations really begins as the university was founded in the mid-1800s. Right on our main campus, I love the wax rhapsodic about the pictures of sheep grazing right next to our agricultural hall, where our vet school now stands, our dairy cows, and the old dairy barn on campus. But obviously, the university founders immediately figured out our state is diverse as well as our national agriculture, and we needed to spread out beyond just the borders of Madison as well as our campus was growing.
(44:59):
Looking strategically at soil types and where rail lines actually aligned so they could move about the state, they put stations in the early 1900s in Spooner, Wisconsin, which is in the northwest up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, which is over on the northeast and the thumb of the state. And a couple in the center part of the state and our Central Sands at Hancock, and one in the more Norgo silt loam soils of Marshfield, Wisconsin. And they began doing outreach through those stations in the 1900s. And then through this last century, leadership of some brilliant deans as well as university administrators have strategically aligned where these stations are. The historical ones have stayed, but then we’ve added different stations to the portfolio as things have evolved over the last century.
(45:49):
Our largest station resides, uh, and the one most people know is just north of Madison in Arlington, Wisconsin, where we have 2,100 acres of pristine empire prairie soil. That’s where you’ll find most of our agronomic research going on. And, of course, everybody in Wisconsin, when they think Wisconsin, they think about the dairy cow, cheese head through and through is what I am. As you can imagine, we have a main dairy unit there as well where our animal and dairy science department is leading tomorrow’s research for what’s gonna be the impacts to the dairy industry. Everything from turfgrass, to hazelnuts, to corn soy, and dairy, pretty much if we have a scientist that’s looking to do research in those areas, we have a station that’s gonna help accommodate that work.
Mike Howell (46:33):
Okay. Mike, sounds like you’re definitely not at a lack of something to do, managing all of those farms and all the diverse research that’s going on up there. You talked about they started in the 1800s, so during that time, I know there’s been a lot of significant contribution. Is there anything that stands out? Any significant contributions to the ag industry that you wanna point out that came from these research farms?
Mike Peters (46:54):
Early on in the 1800s, we, at Wisconsin, talk about the dairy inputs from Stephen Babcock, the Babcock Fat test, and how that revolutionized the dairy industry and for what we do. And then evolving from that, just contributions from everything in soil science, ensuring that we do environmental preservation through our soil science department, as well as our historical agronomy and horticulture departments and plant breeding. I stand on the shoulders of giants uh, the faculty that we have at University of Wisconsin Madison. Those men and women are second to none for doing their work. They’re leading today in sweet corn breeding, field corn breeding, potato breeding.
(47:35):
So we have just major inputs into how the crops that are feeding the people as well as livestock across this country are being produced. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to talk about a turfgrass unit and our third-largest crop in the state of Wisconsin. People forget about it is turfgrass, but the soil science impacts of turfgrass are huge. And, uh, recently we lost a great that was a dean at our college that helped form our turfgrass unit, in Dr. Leo Walsh. His impacts into the soil science work, looking at how turfgrass interacts with agriculture and how that’s a major crop. Dr. Walsh was great, but above and beyond his work in the soil science area, Dr. Walsh was just a great human. It was a pleasure to get to know him, and he’ll be missed as he was always just welcoming. I looked at him as one of the rock stars of our university.
Mike Howell (48:24):
You can’t think about the University of Wisconsin Madison without remembering Dr. Walsh. And every year when we go to the American Society of Agronomy meetings, there’s a lecture in his honor, and always look forward to going to that lecture. Mike, you probably don’t know this, but last season on The Dirt, we did a highlight of famous agronomist, and Dr. Walsh was one of the agronomists we spotlighted on that. We sure hate to hear about his passing and want everyone to remember Dr. Walsh and his family.
Mike Peters (48:49):
Yeah. Thanks for the kind words, Mike. The Badger family appreciates that.
Mike Howell (48:53):
Mike, before we let you go, I’ve got one other question and I’m asking this of all our guests talking about the research farms. We know that agriculture is constantly changing. We’ve got all kind of new technology coming out today, and we also have to have somewhere for all the people to live. We are faced with the urban sprawl and losing farm ground every year. But with all of these changes going on in agriculture, how are the research farms gonna have to adapt to keep up with the change?
Mike Peters (49:17):
You mentioned urban sprawl, Mike. We have a station just to the west of Madison where urban sprawl is moving right around us and that’s actually one of our focuses of they take all the animal waste from our campus unit and still apply it to the land. There is nutrients in the West Madison area with homes right nearby. So providing inputs on how we do composting to eliminate odors before we apply those nutrients to the soil is something that we’re always looking at doing and trying to figure out that urban interaction.
(49:47):
Uh, additionally, we’re seeing across Wisconsin just climate change and how things are changing in the world of agriculture. Just 12 months ago, we were sitting here hand ringing about no rain, and dry, and how the lowlands of our fields look great and the high Knolls look like shriveled-up garbage. And this year the highlands look like the best and the lowlands are all flooded out. So figuring out how we help our agricultural producers mitigate these events that we’re seeing more and more of, it’s just a focus of our research as well as… Like at our Marshfield station, the whole station is there to focus on environmental integrated dairy.
(50:23):
Things can subsist together and they need to subsist together if we’re gonna feed the world. And the University of Wisconsin is looking to be leaders in that to make sure that we are helping guide the producers of our great country moving forward on how the best practices are for sustainability.
Mike Howell (50:38):
Mike, we appreciate you taking time to visit with us today and give us more information about these research farms associated with the University of Wisconsin at Madison. We appreciate all the hard work that’s going on there to help the farmers in the state of Wisconsin. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in today. And as always, if you have any questions about anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website. That’s Nutrien-eKonomics with a K dot com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
