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[00:00:00] Mike Howell: The dirt with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com farming’s go-to informational resource. I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research use, and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to another edition of the Dirt. We’re pleased to have a familiar face with us today. We’ve got Lyle Cowell, senior Agronomist covering the Canadian region with us today. Lyle welcome back to the Dirt and if you will kind of refresh our listeners’ memory as to who you are and what you do up there in Canada.
[00:00:55] Lyle Cowell: Well, Mike, thanks for having me again. It’s always great to be on this podcast. I listen to it every week, learn something from you and your guest every week. I appreciate being part of it. Again, I work as the senior agronomist up here in Canada supporting the agronomy for the fertilizer products at nutrient manufacturers in terms of agronomy and sustainability.
[00:01:14] Mike Howell: Very good. Lyle, I wanted to focus a little bit about potassium this week. Potassium is something that’s in the news pretty regular these days with all the tariffs talk and everything. We know most of our potassium is produced in Canada. Can you talk a little bit about the potash production, how many mines we have up there, and how many tons are being produced annually?
[00:01:36] Lyle Cowell: You bet, Mike. It’s a very important industry in Canada, specifically in the province of Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, there’s 10 mines, a number of them, owned and run by a Nutrien, making Nutrien very large producer of potash fertilizer. It’s an essential industry to the province of Saskatchewan, contributing both to the province as well as the country of Canada.
And it’s continuing to develop. There is additional mines coming on stream in the next year or two in terms of development of mines and in the ongoing production of Potash from mines that we have in place. Just a very, very important industry. It’s interesting, as you said, a lot of people are discovering potash now.
[00:02:12] Lyle Cowell: People who haven’t connected to agriculture. Having connected to what fertilizers are now in social media, we have a lot of potash experts, and it’s interesting to see how people have picked up on this. It’s not just an essential nutrient, but an essential product that we’re fortunate enough to have good supplies of it in North America for our crop production.
[00:02:31] Mike Howell: Wow. I’ll talk a little bit about how we get potassium. I’ve been to the potash mines. Talk to us a little bit about how they get the potash out from under the ground and get it into a bag that we can put out on our crops.
[00:02:42] Lyle Cowell: I’ve been to a few mines over the course of my career, and I would say that it’s very true that people cannot, I guess probably to how complicated a process is. This isn’t just drilling a hole down to the potash beds. They’re initially discovered the potash beds by attempts for drilling for oil, but this isn’t drilling a pipe into the ground to extract a fluid. We have to drill large shafts so that you can elevate.
Mineral material up to the surface. It’s complicated just to create that first mine to access the potash beds, they’re kilometer under the ground, and to actually drill large shafts to that depth and then to move mining equipment to that depth as well as move the people to do the mining and the product to the surface for mining is an incredible feature really.
That’s really just the first step. I think there’s probably a perception that you bring potash to the surface and it’s potash. That’s it. It’s nothing else you have to do, but the next step is, in my mind, every bit is more impressive as it goes through the milling process, through move clays and other salts to be able to float that material off and finally produce a pure product potash.
It’s incredible to see the whole process in action.
[00:03:59] Mike Howell: While I was very impressed the one time I got to go tour one of the plants and I guess what was most impressive other than the big equipment and the machines that far underground is, yeah, I figured we’d go down the elevator and they had let us out the elevator door.
We would be right there where the drilling was going on, but I. From the time we got in the elevator until the time we got to where the machine was actually drilling, it took about an hour to go down the shaft and then get in the vehicle and drive through the tunnels and get there. It doesn’t happen right there at the door of the elevator, so it’s a pretty intricate network of tunnels going around under the ground.
It’s really impressive when you get under the ground and see what’s going on.
[00:04:35] Lyle Cowell: It really is. The oldest mines have been mining now for close to 60 years, and the network and the footprint underground of those mines is very, very large. And like you said, you should expect about a one hour Jeep ride to get to the mining face.
That network of tunnels, the network of belts, to pull that pot act back from the mining phase to the shaft to be able to elevate it to the surface. There’s a lot going on underneath. Growling and you just cannot underestimate the complexity of it.
[00:05:05] Mike Howell: Wow. Let’s talk a little bit about the importance of potassium.
We’ve had several episodes dedicated to potassium, but refresh our listeners and those that may not have heard some of those earlier episodes, why we’re so interested in potassium and why we need it in agriculture so much.
[00:05:19] Lyle Cowell: Well, it is an essential nutrient, so required for the development and reproduction of plants, and then of course, important into our own bodies as a nutrient.
There are chapters written on the essential role of potassium in plants and animals, but when push comes to shove, when you look at what will kill the plant first, if it doesn’t have enough potassium, it’ll be all about the water balance in the plant. So potassium lends the ability of plants to move.
Water within the plant upwards and within the plant, and also then with water movement within the plant. That also means it’s the mechanism for which other nutrients and sugars move within the plant. So it’s really all about water balance. If you don’t have enough potassium, that’s where you’ll start to see deficiency symptoms.
A potassium, it’ll look drought affected, perhaps wilting, perhaps necrosis or browning of some of the plant tissue, much as you would see in a crop that’s suffering from drought. And one can talk about a lot of the other complexities of potassium in terms of enzymatic activity and many, many other responsibilities within the plant.
But it comes down to it, I think, on the farm, if you just think of it as its essential role in water balances.
[00:06:33] Mike Howell: While I’m not a medical doctor, I understand that there is an importance of potassium in the human body, but when you were talking there, it kinda reminded me of something. Going back to my high school days and playing football, one thing we were always worried about was cramps, and especially early in the year, it was hot and you’d start sweating a lot and everybody would, the first couple of games, everybody would have cramps and they would start giving you potassium to try to get rid of that.
But it was water imbalance, much like you described there with. The plants needing that potassium for the water balance, and we were sweating out so much water at the time, we lost that water balance and the potassium was probably what was keeping that balance in place.
[00:07:10] Lyle Cowell: Yeah, absolutely. That even reminds me to mention that the product that we call potash potassium is essential as a nutrient, as a fertilizer nutrient, but potash enters into a lot of different uses in industry, including in food stuffs.
When you have a deficiency of. Potash supply. It will affect fertilizer supply, but it will affect the production of so many other products as well.
[00:07:33] Mike Howell: While we’ve talked a little bit about the importance of potassium, we’ve also talked about the potash being mined there in Canada. A lot of people kind of have the assumption that since all the potash is in Canada and being produced there, you really don’t have to worry about it in the soils.
Is that necessarily the case? Talk a little bit about the soils there in Canada, and if we need to add potash to those soils.
[00:07:53] Lyle Cowell: Yeah, it’s a misperception when it comes down to it. The potash beds are in the range of a thousand meters below the soil surface, and they were deposited by ancient seas, so as ancient seas evaporated salts, including potash, salts were laid in beds underneath the ground, and this was millions of years ago.
Now when we think about our soil, it’s separated by a thousand meters and it’s separated by millions of years. The potassium level in our soils has absolutely no relationship to the potash that is below the surface, and you can most certainly have potassium deficiency. Right above where you are mining potash from the ground.
Now a lot of Canada has pretty young soils as almost all of Canadian agricultural soils were deposited by glaciers in the range of eight or 10,000 years ago. It’s the youthfulness of our soils as well as the relatively high cat and exchange capacity of our soils. That really lends to our soils not being very deficient in potassium when we started to farm them.
It’s true that our young soils generally had a pretty good supply of potassium at the time that we started farming them, say a hundred years ago or more. The problem is that that became locked into a farming tradition that we don’t need to add potassium because we have lots of potassium and we’ve now come to a place where.
Over at least a hundred years removing potassium every year without replacement, that we’re starting to see significant deficiency symptoms due to potassium in our soils. Most farms across Canada have been farming their farmland for at least a hundred years, so that means that most farms have removed at least a thousand pounds of the most available potassium from the soil.
In many cases, without adding any potassium back, we’ve slowly created essentially a trade deficit within our soil. We’re taking, without replacing, that’s becoming a problem. It’s not hard to resolve the problem, but certainly we have to keep our eyes open and our thoughts open to the idea that a good portion of our soils.
Even right up above our potash mines in Saskatchewan are or are becoming potassium deficient.
[00:10:04] Mike Howell: Wow. What can we do to correct that? You said it’s not hard to fix that problem. Is it just as simple as making a fertilizer application?
It really is. It’s one of the simpler nutrients to sort out in terms of management and replacement for our.
Farming region. Our risk of loss in our soils in Canada, uh, potassium is very low. Our soils tend to be relatively high in organic matter, tend to be fairly heavy textured on average, on a world scale. So we have a high cation exchange capacity. So our risk of loss by leaching or any other mechanism is very low.
It’s a matter of really, in most cases, just replacing. What we’ve removed. Nice thing about potassium. It is certainly required in large amounts. I think in previous podcasts you’ve talked about this with Alan Blaylock and others required in very large amounts, but removed in relatively small amounts, not much of the potassium that a crop needs.
Enter the seed that will harvest. Most crop rotations in this northern region across Canada. Our removal rate of potassium is relatively low. One just needs to take a step back and sort out how much potassium you are removing with your specific crop rotation and start replacing it. It might mean. 15 pounds of potassium per acre.
It might mean per year. It might mean 25 pounds of potassium per acre per year. Whether you add that every year or if you add it on a rotational basis, every three or four years, you can start to resolve the deficiency that might be developing in your farm rotation quite easily.
[00:11:35] Mike Howell: Lyle, talk about the specific crops. Is there a difference in the potassium requirements for canola versus corn versus the forages that y’all are producing up there?
[00:11:45] Lyle Cowell: The first thing I’d say is, and I see this so often in fertilizer management, first thing to remember is that all crops need potassium. We’ve somewhat, especially in Western Canada, got locked into the idea that that barley needs potassium, but other crops don’t need potassium.
All crops need potassium. It’s true that barley requires a bit more potassium than wheat or oats or canola, but if you only apply potassium. To barley in your rotation, it just means that your rotation is slowly becoming more and more deficient in potassium. I think it’s a better idea for farmers to take a step back and figure out on rotational basis how much you need.
Now, a couple of the things that a farmers should think about is that if you change your rotation, you’ll change your potassium removal. A great example is in Manitoba. A region that drew wheat, canola of those short season crops that require just relatively small additions of potassium, maybe 15 pounds of potassium per acre.
A lot of that region has converted to a rotation of soybeans and corn on a four year annualized basis instead of removing. 80 pounds of potassium per acre over four years, they’re now maybe removing 150 to 180 pounds of potassium per acre. So if you change your rotation, you have to keep your eye on the ball on how that affects your potassium removal.
And the other one, and we’ve talked about forages in the past, Mike. If you are a cattle grower and if you are removing hay, if you’re removing silage, if you’re removing straw from the field, when you remove that entire crop, including the stems and leaves of a crop, then you’re removing a lot of potassium.
You have an intensive rotation removing hay in silage. You might pretty quickly have a removal rate of over 200 pounds, upwards of 300 pounds of potassium per year. Again, every crop needs potassium. Certainly different amounts, but I think it’s best resolved by a farmer with the advice of an agronomist, perhaps, to just take a step back and sort out how much is actually being removed over the course of the rotation and start to deal with it from that perspective.
[00:13:47] Mike Howell: Well, you said something and I always enjoy visiting with you. It always makes me think of things a little bit different, but. You mentioned the change in rotation and how that may change your potassium levels in the soil. And I don’t wanna elaborate on this too much today because I actually have a guest schedule that we’re gonna be talking to here in a couple of weeks, talking about changing the crop rotation like we did here in the mid south probably 20, 25 years ago.
And changing from strictly a cotton rotation to having corn and soybeans in that mix as well. And maybe not even having cotton in the mix anymore. We saw some definite changes in potassium levels and that started to catch up with us. We’ll have an episode dedicated to that situation here in a few weeks.
Stay tuned for that one. But I did want to go back and one thing that you mentioned that the potassium was relatively immobile in the soil and that was because you have the heavy clays and the high CEC soils up there, you don’t lose it. It, that’s a little different than the situation I’m in down here on the Gulf Coast in south Mississippi.
We actually recommend split applications of potassium in some instances because we have these. Deep sandy soils. We have a very low CEC, and we can actually leach that potassium out. Do y’all ever run into anything like that up there? Or do y’all have enough CEC that it’s gonna hold it all the time?
[00:15:01] Lyle Cowell: We have two things going for us. One of them is a long, miserable winter. It keeps the potassium in place because the ground is frozen for a good part of the year where you probably would be subject to some leaching throughout. Doesn’t matter what month it might be. We have relatively high sea soils. I. As well as relatively low risk to losing it through the winter period.
It’s just not a big issue. I remember the first time that we talked about this in terms of potassium leaching Mike, and my mind was like, really? I didn’t think anybody had significant leaching problems of potassium. We barely have leaching problems of. Anions, nitrates and sulfate. It’s tends to be a fairly insignificant problem across a lot of our farming region.
The loss of potassium through the course of leaching is close to zero. Really big picture. Our losses by harvest removal really no other means. And I mentioned the idea that, do we need to apply it every year? That’s the level of risk that we have in terms of loss of potassium for a lot of our farming area.
We could apply a high rate of potassium every three or four years and be good for the four year rotation. So not just not worrying about it in terms of leaching on a one year basis, but really over the course of the entire rotation.
[00:16:16] Mike Howell: Well, all the long winters is something we have down here as well. I think our winter was one of the longest we’ve ever had this year.
I think it lasted three whole days, so love to invite you down during the winter and experience our winters here in South Mississippi.
[00:16:29] Lyle Cowell: But well, as we sit here today, Mike, there’s still snow in the fields and the snow melt is running off the fields here today in mid-April. Yeah, we have a bit more of a winter.
[00:16:39] Mike Howell: I hate that for you, Lyle. Before we started recording, I was actually in the field scouting some corn, just putting a second leaf on this morning. So we’re a little bit ahead of you in that regard.
[00:16:49] Lyle Cowell: I’d have to go to a restaurant to see corn today, I’m afraid.
[00:16:53] Mike Howell: Well, Lyle, we talked a lot about potash today. Is there anything that we’ve missed that we need to bring out in this episode? Any take home message for our listeners?
[00:17:01] Lyle Cowell: I think we’ve had a good chat. I mean, just to introduce the idea of. A potential deficiency in an area that has traditionally not considered it as a potential deficiency. My last word, I guess. Farmers are faced with a lot of products, hundreds of products that they might want to buy, and we sometimes skip over the most essential nutrients.
And in Western Canada, actually, Canada in general, we need to pay more attention to the simple message that potassium might be, the nutrient that is missing. It’s a relatively inexpensive nutrient because most of it does cycle back to the soil. So our rate of removal is not. Tremendously high. So in Western Canada, most farmers could resolve potassium deficiency in a rotation for less than 10 Canadian dollars per year.
It’s a very simple specialty nutrient for some farmers, and it’s not terribly expensive. And the cost across the Northern Great plains across all of Canada is actually relatively low in terms of. Crop costs and relative to the potential benefit to the crops
[00:18:08] Mike Howell: Lyle, when you put it in those terms, it’s a no-brainer.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a grower tell me that it only costs $10 an acre for this new product. Potassium’s been around for a long time. It’s been well studied, and $10 an acre like you just mentioned. That’s proven results and gonna do a lot better than a lot of these $10 an acre products that are on the market today.
[00:18:28] Lyle Cowell: Absolutely based on decades, hundreds of years of science that we know it’s an essential nutrient. So when people say, where’s the science? Where’s the data? There are books full of data and science when it comes to potassium.
[00:18:41] Mike Howell: Well, Lyle, we really appreciate you taking time outta your busy schedule to visit with us today.
I always get a lot out of these episodes. Listeners, we appreciate you sticking around and listening with us today. Wanna invite you to hang around 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. Visit Nutrien-eKonomics.com at submit your question with the ask an agronomist feature.
Listeners, welcome back for segment two. Today we have Dr. Karl Wyant, director of Agronomy with Nutrien back in the studio with us. Karl, welcome back to the dirt.
[00:19:26] Dr. Karl Wyant: Thank you for having me.
[00:19:28] Mike Howell: Karl, our ask the agronomist question for the day is dealing with soil conditions and we wanna know what soil conditions affect potassium availability. What are some of the best management practices for potassium applications?
[00:19:40] Dr. Karl Wyant: Great question. With this 94 million acres of corn, we’re thinking about planting here at the start of the season.
We’ve had a lot of questions about potassium and how do I make that investment in potassium fertilizer more available to my plants? So we gotta think about what are you competing with in the soil for your potassium chemistry? How do we get more of it in a plant? When you think about potassium competition, there’s.
Tie up by certain clays where that clay in the soil can glom onto your applied potassium fertilizer and hold it tight and your plant can’t get to it. That could be a challenge with heavy soils or with soils that have certain types of clays in them that make them prone to, that tie up under really sort of nasty conditions and certain parts of the farming world where we have soils that are derived from granite bedrock, we can actually have this challenge called potassium fixation where.
Think of it like a sandwich where we have these clays that have this big inner layer and those clays can just store a whole bunch of your applied potassium and actually fix the potassium and render it unavailable to the crops. So under those special conditions we have to specifically manage for potassium fixation.
Some other challenges we have. With potassium. I’m gonna move away from the clays, but we get into sodium antagonism. If you have too much sodium in your soil, that could limit your crop’s uptake of potassium. So we have an antagonism when we have very sandy soils that have low organic matter, you can actually leach out your potassium.
Those are fairly exceptional in the farming world. Very sandy soils is what I’m talking about. Maybe on top of a lot of folks’ minds right now, we can have drought induced deficiency because a substantial portion of the potassium ion enters the plant roots through this mechanism called mass flow or that flow of water through the soil up into the plant.
If you’ve got a drought issue, you can actually limit your potassium fertilizer uptake and see a deficiency above ground despite your application of fertilizers earlier in the year.
[00:21:36] Mike Howell: Karl, I’m glad you mentioned the leaching of potassium. That’s something we have to deal with here on the Gulf Coast pretty regularly in these sandy soils.
A lot of times we’ll make a split application of potassium just to make sure we have some available for the crop.
[00:21:48] Dr. Karl Wyant: I was gonna say, Mike, it’s just like how we manage nitrate in some areas on very sandy soils that potassium can leave the system. And if you look at a lot of agronomy textbooks, they say potassium is relatively immobile in soil, but there’s usually a big asterisk that says, unless you’re under very sandy soils, lower organic matter.
There you go. There’s your warning. Yeah.
[00:22:08] Mike Howell: Karl. We sure appreciate you 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. 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.
