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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt, with me, Mike Howell, an economics 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, everyone, welcome back to The Dirt. Glad you’re tuning in today. We have a familiar face back with us today. We haven’t had him on in quite a while, but we have Dr. Nathan Slaton with the University of Arkansas back with us today. Nathan, welcome back to The Dirt.
Nathan Slaton (00:54):
Thanks for having me, Mike, it’s always a pleasure to chat with you.
Mike Howell (00:57):
Nathan, if you will, remind our listeners who you are and what you’re doing there at the University of Arkansas.
Nathan Slaton (01:02):
Currently, I serve as the Assistant Director for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, which is the research arm of the University of Arkansas division of Ag. I’ve been in this position since 2018, and prior to that, I really started with the division of Ag back in 1989 as a county agent in Jefferson County, Arkansas, just south of Little Rock. And since that time, I’ve served as county agent, area agronomist, the state rice agronomist, and then, in the early 2000s, moved from Stuttgart to Fayetteville in a teaching research position, and have had a great career.
Mike Howell (01:43):
Well, Dr. Slaton, I know we’ve done a lot of work together over the years, and we appreciate everything you’ve done for not only the state of Arkansas, but across the whole country, as well. Today, I thought we would talk a little bit about a program that you were instrumental in helping get started, and it’s still up and going, and I don’t really know the status of it, so maybe you can fill us in with everything that’s going on. But I’m referring to the FRST program, or it goes by the abbreviation FRST, I believe. So if you will, tell us a little bit about that program.
Nathan Slaton (02:11):
Will do. Thanks, Mike, for asking. The FRST program, which, FRST stands for Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool, this really started in 2017 at a meeting that was the Southeastern Research Soil Testing Group, where several of us came together, including John Spargo, who’s in the northeast part of the country at Penn State, Pete Kleinman, who at the time was also at Penn State in a USDA position. And we really started looking at recommendations in the southeastern US for 13 different states, and figured out that we had different critical soil test values, we didn’t necessarily define critical soil test value the same way, and our fertilizer rate recommendations were a lot of times different, even when we were using the same soil test extractant. This is not necessarily a new problem, that’s been known really since the 1960s, that recommendations from land-grant institutions change when you cross that invisible state line.
(03:19):
But anyway, that was the beginning of conversations that really led to the development of the first project, really, a nationwide project at this point. It started out in the Southeast, along with Pete Kleinman and John Spargo at Penn State, but since then, it has expanded to the point that we now have over 100 collaborators that include representatives from 45 land-grant institutions, one State Department of Agriculture. We have participants or collaborators from USDA, ARS, the NRCS, and the FSA. And then, we are also trying to involve private industry in this. Dustin Sawyer from Rock River Labs is one of our collaborators, and we have been working pretty closely with ALTA, which is the Agricultural Laboratory Testing Association, which consists of numerous private labs in the Midwest. So we are both a public and private collaborators trying to really focus on soil fertility, and we have lots of different objectives.
Mike Howell (04:30):
Well, Dr. Slaton, tell us a little bit about some of the goals or objectives, as you stated, of the program. What are we trying to get out of this program?
Nathan Slaton (04:37):
Well, from a very broad perspective, I would say that our objectives and goals of the first project are, number one, it’s probably not news to folks that go to educational meetings that a lot of our soil fertility people and the land-grant institutions across the US, we’re either going bald or going gray, and there tends to be fewer of us these days. So one of the most important activities that we do is, we have a monthly meeting, and typically, there’s about 40 different people joining in that meeting, and it’s an opportunity for us to have a collaborator tell everyone what they’re doing from a soil fertility, and we tend to focus on phosphorus and potassium. We have not just a lot of well-experienced scientists in our group, but we have a lot of young scientists that have recently been hired. So it’s really a mentoring program and a way for some of us old guys and gals to pass on some of the wisdom and communicate methods and things that not everybody is well-trained in. So that’s one of the things that I think is really important.
(05:52):
The second thing that I would mention is that, and this really gets to the crux of the Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool name, as we have been archiving data, and this is the data that our soil test recommendations at land-grant institutions is based on, we’re all trained as scientists, and 35, 40 years ago, when I was an undergraduate, computers were just starting to show up. We didn’t have laptops, and we didn’t have them at home. They were trying to teach us the basics of DOS. We missed out on how to manage data, and not just manage data, but manage a lot of data. One person can do a lot of research and accumulate a lot of data from soil test, tissue analysis, now we have remote sensing. Anyway, lots of data, and we have not always managed it well, such that when we retire or change jobs, some of that data gets lost.
(06:49):
So one of the most important things that we have been doing is developing a database that can be accessed by scientists across the US on phosphorus and potassium correlation trials that have been conducted in the fields. And to date, we have almost 2,600 individual trials. That sounds like a lot, but it’s really just a small percentage of what has been done over the last 100 years. So that’s the second thing. The third thing I would mention is that this is a group that I think is trying to advance the science of soil testing and soil test correlation as it pertains to developing actionable fertilizer recommendations using routine soil tests.
(07:34):
And that really has two components. One is geared towards scientists. Scientists can access this database, and we can start working on, how do we use big data? Before, most of this data has been housed at the state level, and we’re sometimes lucky if we have 50 or 60 years of information to do a correlation and to develop or validate soil test P and K recommendations. Now, when we start putting all this together from each state, we have a large data set, 1300 trials for phosphorus, 1200 or so for potassium, and it provides a much more robust data set that we can start looking at. So that’s one aspect.
(08:21):
The other thing that we’re doing that I think that pertains to the advancing the science of soil testing is really just education, trying to make our recommendations a little bit more user-friendly. Right now, I think we have different recommendations, we have different soil test methods. Not everybody understands that. Back earlier in my career, the University of Arkansas, we expressed our soil test information in pounds per acre, another lab that was used by a lot of Arkansas producers used parts per million. And if anybody compared soil test between them, it says you’re using the same method, but the numbers are a lot different. That’s a very basic part of education, but getting growers and consultants to understand more of the science that goes into interpreting soil test information, such that we can optimize the use of our fertilizers from both an economic and an agronomic standpoint.
Mike Howell (09:17):
Dr. Slaton, I’ve already learned a lot from listening to you talk this morning. I now know why I’m bald, I think I’ve attended way too many of these professional soil science meetings over the years.
Nathan Slaton (09:27):
Well, that makes both of us.
Mike Howell (09:30):
Bring the trends from the field to your field. EKonomics features the latest crop nutrition research tips and tools to help keep your soil and bottom lines as healthy as possible. See it all at nutrien-ekonomics, with a K, .com. Dr. Slaton, you mentioned that you have 45 different institutions now that are working in this project. Even if we go from Mississippi across to Arkansas, we see some differences in soils in just that short of distance. How can we accommodate for all the different soil types and different soil characteristics when we’re looking across the whole country, and how do you get around that issue?
Nathan Slaton (10:05):
So that’s a great question and a great point, Mike. One of the questions that is asked quite frequently is, do you expect the same soil test value to work as a fertilizer cutoff or critical soil test value in Arkansas and Mississippi versus Iowa and Wisconsin? Putting all this data together, I think will help us answer that, but one of the things that we noticed very early, whenever we started looking at data that was available, as scientists working for land-grant institutions, we’re encouraged to publish our work in peer-reviewed journal articles, and that has not always been a robust process, in that, we collect lots of data, but only a small percentage of that data gets reported, simply because it may be deemed peripheral information or not highly relevant to the main topic of what we’re publishing.
(11:01):
One of the things that we did early was, we developed a minimum data set, and that minimum data set was geared towards, this is the information that is really required for us to report when we do soil test correlation. And then, we had a second category that everybody was encouraged to develop or collect additional information that was deemed recommended. But the crux of all this is that we’re also recommending that that information be shared in a peer-reviewed journal article as supplemental information, because if you think about our soil test recommendations today, soil test potassium is basically all that we use typically to make potassium recommendations. Some states do consider something like [inaudible 00:11:52] exchange capacity, or how much clay is in the soil, but there are a lot of things, other soil physical and chemical properties, that we could probably model to make our soil test-based recommendations more specific. PH, organic matter, soil clay content, all of those things we know work hand in hand, influence soil nutrient availability to the plant.
Mike Howell (12:17):
Well, Dr. Slaton, I know you’ve been working in this project for what, seven or eight years now, and putting a lot of this information together. What are some of the key findings that you’ve been able to identify from this?
Nathan Slaton (12:27):
Well, Mike, honestly, the findings have really come from a lot of different side projects, in regards to mining the data that we have in our database, and I’ll just backtrack here a little bit, in April of 2024, that is when we really released the decision support tool that is available on the web. We have spent most of our time putting together data, and then, also trying to make consensus-based decisions as a body of soil scientists on how to do soil test correlation, and maybe in more simple terms, trying to get everybody to agree on a method that we can universally use to interpret that information, such that we’re all looking from the same set of rules. Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re telling everybody that this is the only way to do it, because we know, just like buying a truck, I mean, there’s Chevys, there are Dodges, there’s Fords.
(13:31):
With soil test correlation data, there’s different ways of calculating relative yield, or maybe not even using relative yield, but using delta yield, yield increase, as an example, or what model do you apply to the data? And all of those things can influence the information on the back end, and that information, what we’re trying to get at is, what is the soil test potassium or the soil test phosphorus value for each method that kind of divides the point of, we are going to get an economic yield response when we fertilize below that soil test level?
(14:09):
And it doesn’t mean that you can’t apply fertilizer when soil test values are above that, because that depends a little bit on, is it land that you own, land that you rent? What’s the price of the crop that you’re growing? What’s the price of the fertilizer? There’s a lot of things that go into that decision, as well as, is it your philosophy to try to build, bank nutrients in the soil to some degree versus just make sure that the nutrients that are needed for maximum yield or present?
(14:40):
So there’s a lot of things that go into that, and we’re not trying to say that this is the number that you have to stop applying fertilizer, we’re just trying to give our stakeholders, our growers, our professionals who are working in advising farmers, consultants, we’re trying to give them a second piece of information, that when they get their soil test results and they start developing fertilizer recommendations, that they can go to this tool and use it as a resource.
Mike Howell (15:08):
And I think that’s a great point, Dr. Slaton, we know every farmer is going to be managing things a little bit different, they may have a different goal in mind when they’re making a fertilizer application, and a lot of consultants are going to have different goals in mind. And that’s something we’ve pointed out on other podcasts, if you get your recommendations back from one lab and they recommend one thing, and another lab may recommend something else, have a conversation with them and see where they’re making that decision based on. If you’re looking to build and maintain, that’s going to be two totally different situations there. Appreciate you pointing that out to us.
Nathan Slaton (15:40):
Yeah, Mike, I’d just add to that, that soil test laboratories, we do a pretty good job of reporting all of the pH and all the information that you would expect on that soil test report, but there’s a lot of information that goes between that and the fertilizer recommendation that’s just not transparent, and that is that the soil test lab or the agronomist that put those recommendations together, what is their philosophy? A lot of farmers don’t realize that there are different philosophies out there, so we’re trying to provide very fundamental information that can be used as a resource for people to look and see what the response in their soils or in their geographic area, and/or for the specific soil tests that they’re using, something that they can just go and refer to.
Mike Howell (16:30):
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. Visit nutrien-ekonomics, with a K, .com, and submit your question with the ask an agronomist feature. Dr. Slaton, you kind of went around and around a soapbox issue of mine, and I don’t get on social media a lot, but it seems like every time I do, I see somebody else talking about the university specialists don’t understand what’s going on, and there’s new ways of doing things, and the university is way behind. They’re looking at doing things a different way, and I want to give you just a minute, if you will, to address some of those and tell everybody what’s going on at the universities.
Nathan Slaton (17:18):
Well, I think you’re referencing in regards to fertility recommendations there.
Mike Howell (17:24):
Right.
Nathan Slaton (17:24):
Yeah, so this is one of the things that I mentioned, the group that got together in 2017, we started looking at our recommendations. That is one of the things that we put together, all of that information, we published it. We also did a national survey, when we had 49 of 50 states respond to that survey about their philosophy of their recommendations, what soil test extractants they were using. So a lot of information, and all that has been archived and published. And one of the things that we found is that we do have some land-grant institutions that have much more liberal recommendations than others. Some subscribe to sufficiency-based recommendations, some build and maintain, some are somewhere in between that we called a hybrid, and we still have a lot of information to mine in regards to figuring that out.
(18:20):
One of the most important things I think that we have figured out is that we don’t always talk the same language. And here’s a great example, one of the questions that we ask in a national survey was, do you use names for your soil test levels or soil test categories? And there was only two or three states that really did not, but for all the other states that responded to that question, there were 14 different terms used to identify soil test levels. By this, I mean, very low, low, medium, high, optimum, very high, excessive, adequate, sufficient. I think I just named about 8 of the 14. And in some cases, and I’ll just use high as an example, typically, when I say, well, your soil test potassium is high, I think that most people would take that as meaning, I probably don’t need to fertilize. But when you start looking at state level recommendations, some do recommend fertilizer when it’s called high. Most don’t, but some do, so that’s confusing.
(19:25):
Now, that was just an example, I think, of how we’re not all communicating even within land-grant institutions using the same language, and I think there’s a lot of progress that we can make in that area. But typically, I think, at least, this is my perception, that a lot of people look at land-grant university recommendations as being conservative, and that if you’re looking to produce average yields, these are the soil test recommendations that will probably work for you. But if you’re a high achieving producer or you’re trying to push that yield envelope, that you need to use higher rates. And certainly, we know that if you’re growing 300 bushel corn or 100 bushel soybeans versus 170 bushel corn and 50 bushel beans, that the amount of P and K that you remove with that harvested crop changes with the yield value.
(20:23):
So yes, there is something that I think we have to understand, that fertilizer recommendations are a guide, and that, if you’re an exceptional producer producing very high yields, you may need to use slightly higher than recommended values. But I would also caution that yield goals do not mean that you can’t produce above average or exceptionally high yields with regular land-grant university recommendations. And that is one of the questions you ask, what have we learned? I think every soil scientist in this group of collaborators has questions that they want answered.
(21:03):
That’s one of the questions that I’ve been asked for a couple of decades here in Arkansas, is, okay, I’m averaging 90 bushel soybeans across my farm, the state average is 50, and you say your recommendations are based on state averages. Can I produce those yields using your recommendations over time? Or maybe to put a little more specifically, is the critical soil test value for producing 50 bushel soybeans the same as it is for 90 bushel beans? Right now, I don’t know that any one state has a database that is large enough for us to answer that question, but we are in hopes that once we put all of this data together, that we can answer that question.
(21:48):
Now, that brings up another point that I guess I need to make, is that, when you look at this database that we have of almost 2,600 trials, about half of those trials have been conducted in the past 20 years. So about 50% of that data is more than 20 years old. And this is one of the things that we’ve been trying to make progress on is, soil test correlation research in the field just isn’t sexy. We’ve been doing it for 100 years, and so, the question is asked, why do you need more data? Well, yields have changed over the past 100 years, our hybrids and our varieties have changed.
(22:30):
Production practices have changed. Just in the time that I’ve been here in Arkansas, we have gone from a low percent of our acres that are irrigated, to now, almost everything that you see from a corn and soybean perspective, it’s irrigated. So we have different water availability, different stress situations, completely different yield levels that we’re producing today. So we need current data to update our recommendations, and it takes money to do these trials. Like I said, five trials, that means a lot to us, but we need information from lots of field trials from across all of our production areas, from the south to the north, from the west to the east.
Mike Howell (23:15):
It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, and about every time you think you’ve got your hands on it, things change again, and you have to start over, so it’s never going to end. And you mentioned varieties have changed, yield goals have changed. I think I saw a statistic that a variety or a hybrid that comes out this year has a two to three-year life expectancy before it’s replaced with something better. So yields are constantly going up, these seed companies are trying to improve yields with every variety they release. Hopefully, we can keep these yields going in the right direction, and it’s going to be more and more research that we need out of this. Dr. Slaton, you mentioned that there was a website, can you tell us a little bit more about the website where somebody can go to find out more information about the program?
Nathan Slaton (23:54):
Yes, sir, the website that we have all of our information, including access to the support tool that we’ve discussed, is soiltestfrst.org, and that is soil, S-O-I-L, test, T-E-S-T, frst, F-R-S-T. So no I in that first, but soiltestfirst.org, and that will take you to our main page where it shows all of our collaborators, collaborating universities. It provides who has been funding our project, it also has a host of presentations and links to papers that we have published. But most important of all, there is a link there to the tool that you can go, and you don’t have to have a secret password or know the secret handshake, you can just go to that site and play around with the tool.
(24:45):
We continue to work on trying to add data to that tool. We have sponsors in the past that we have used, NRCS and USDA money, to actually implement field trials. OCP North America has been sponsoring trials for some of our collaborators. And then, we have a lot of information that’s coming from commodity boards, and fertilizer tonnage fees from around the country, that we’re encouraging soil scientists, soil fertility folks, to contribute to this database. But all of that can be accessed there, and certainly, there is a spot on there for you to contact us, if you need more information or you have comments, we’d love to hear from you if this tool is helpful or not.
Mike Howell (25:31):
Well, Nathan, we appreciate you taking time to visit with us this morning, and we really appreciate the hard work that you and everybody else is doing on this FRST program. Look forward to seeing more and more great information coming out of that. Listeners, we hope you’ve enjoyed this first segment of today’s program. I want to invite everybody to stick around as we bring you another research farm update here in just a few moments. 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.
(26:14):
Don’t forget to visit our website, nutrien-ekonomics, with a K, .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 nutrient-ekonomics, with a K, .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.
(27:00):
Well listeners, we appreciate you hanging around for segment two. We’ve got another research farm update for you. Now, I realize that we have already been to the state of Arkansas once this year, and we had a great update from one of the experiment stations there, but we have Dr. Slaton on with us today, and I thought it would be great to introduce a brand new research farm with the University of Arkansas. Dr. Slaton, if you will, tell us a little bit about the new rice research station.
Nathan Slaton (27:24):
Well, thanks for asking, Mike. This is pretty exciting, we have a brand new research and extension center that is being built just south of Jonesboro, Arkansas. The town name is kind of a spot in the road, but it’s Greenfield, Arkansas. And this is exciting just simply because there’s not a whole lot of land-grant institutions within the US that are opening up new research and extension centers across the US, and so, this is one that was really made possible by the vision of one of our commodity boards here in Arkansas, and that is our Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board. This particular research and extension center is located in Poinsett County, which, year in and year out, is the county in Arkansas that has the largest rice acreage of all the rice-producing counties in Arkansas. So it is kind of in the heart of rice-producing country.
(28:25):
The other thing that certainly, in my career, that you can kind of say that the growers, at least on the west side of Crowley’s Ridge, and this particular county is kind of divided by Crowley’s Ridge, that is, remnants of the Mississippi River used to flow differently. So anyway, on the west side of Crowley’s Ridge, it’s silt loam soils, on the east side of Crowley’s Ridge, it tends to be anywhere from silt loam to sandy loam soils that are great for cotton production, to heavy clay soils that are really good for rice production.
(29:00):
So pretty diverse county, but on the west side of Crowley’s Ridge, where it’s silt loam soils that have been used for rice production for probably 100 years, they have kind of been the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Propanil-resistant barnyard grass, this is where it probably started. [inaudible 00:29:20] deficiency of rice, potassium deficiency of rice, boron deficiency of soybean, it seems like if there’s a problem, those are the growers that experience it first. When we hear from them that there’s a problem that we need to start investigating, this is typically where it’s occurred. This particular research station is going to serve the needs of not just that county, but similar problems in a lot of the surrounding counties, as well.
Mike Howell (29:47):
So Dr. Slaton, how many scientists are going to be assigned there at the farm once it gets up and operational to a 100%?
Nathan Slaton (29:54):
We’re probably going to have about six different scientists at this facility. Here in Arkansas, that’s what separates what we call a research and extension center from just a research station, and that’s whether faculty are there. But we are going to have about six faculty, some of those faculty are already in place, and once the facility opens, they’ll just simply pack up their boxes and all of their research tools and move over there. We have a couple of positions, one of them right now is advertised for a crop scientist, so that position is open, and we’ll be looking at candidates here in the very near future. And then, there’s a second position in soil fertility that’ll be advertised here shortly. And both of those positions are going to be split between extension and research responsibilities, one will be mostly research and a little bit extension, and the other one will be just flip side of that
Mike Howell (30:52):
Dr. Slaton, you mentioned that the Grower Association helped get this started, and we know that you’re wanting to do rice research there, and we understand the need for that, but we also understand that there’s a need to do crop rotation type work. Will you be doing some work there with other crops, or is it just going to be specifically rice there?
Nathan Slaton (31:08):
No, we’re referring to it as a rice research station, but certainly, when you look at our rice production system, rice has grown in rotation with soybeans and corn, so there will be research on those crops there. Again, Poinsett County, this particular area has problems and other crops besides rice, so all of those will be researched there, but certainly, rice is going to be an emphasis for us.
Mike Howell (31:34):
Dr. Slaton, I told somebody when we talked about doing this one, that we were going to make podcast history today, because I doubt very seriously, anybody else has done a podcast talking about a brand new research farm in agriculture. So I hope I’m right on that, and hopefully, this is the first one that gets out talking about this new research farm.
Nathan Slaton (31:52):
I would like to just throw in there that there are some unique aspects to this facility. The board members that make up the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board obviously are interested in what research and educational programs that are going to come out of the programs that are housed at this facility. But they were also adamant that we needed to have an outreach to kindergarten through 12th grade here. So there is going to be a greenhouse and a teaching classroom that is specifically oriented for an instructor that we will have, and her entire focus is going to be on working with schools, to bring them in, to help educate them, not just on rice, but obviously, that’s going to be a focal point, but agriculture in general. We can see this being just how rice grows to helping out the students who are entered in science projects, as well as just hands-on, hey, this is a rice plant, this is what it looks like. Making sure that they know that their rice doesn’t just come from the grocery store, that’s what’s growing in the fields that they pass as they go by.
(32:58):
So that’s a really important component of this facility. Another neat aspect of this facility is, it’s going to have a demonstration kitchen to it, as well as a boardroom and a large auditorium for public space opportunities and symposiums and educational meetings. So this particular farm is going to have really state of the art, I think, production system, it’s about 614 total acres, and a little over 400 of those acres are going to be in fields that are precision leveled or zero grade fields. So we have a really good system in place here, and a lot of folks are excited about being able to come onto this station and see what we can do moving forward with not just irrigation research, but all aspects, from variety development, evaluation, agronomics, pest management, and soil fertility.
Mike Howell (33:57):
Dr. Slaton, we really appreciate you being on with us today, and we’re excited about the research farm. I can’t wait to get up and visit that farm for myself when I get through that area next time. Dr. Slaton, thanks again. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in this week, and as always, if you need information on anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website, that’s nutrien-ekonomics, with a K, .com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
