No easy answers for farm nutrient management equation

Opinion

Farmers took full advantage of the windy, hot weather this week to chip away at harvest. They had about three-quarters of the province’s crop in their bins just as October arrived with a cooler, wetter forecast.

But it hasn’t been easy, as evidenced by the deeply rutted fields in areas that received heavy rains two weeks ago. There has been no shortage of anecdotal reports of “rescue” operations, where an individual operation’s harvest was waylaid by the need to extract equipment mired in the mud.

Wet soils beneath a thick canopy of ripe crops also add up to quality losses. While much of the early cereals harvested this fall have ranked in the top grades, some fields where harvest was delayed by rain resulted in grain that was downgraded to livestock feed, which is a major hit on pricing.

The unusually warm day and night-time temperatures have also created headaches harvesting potatoes. The optimum temperature range for putting potatoes into storage is between 7 C and 15 C. Harvest when spuds are too cold and they bruise; storing them when they are too warm increases the risk of diseases that cause rot. At this time of year, the shift from one extreme to the other can happen overnight, so the window of opportunity is narrow.

Except for crops such as field corn, where it’s not uncommon to see farmers harvesting through the snow in December, it gets harder to collect the remaining field crops as the days shorten and temperatures fall. Grain is more apt to require artificial drying and attentive storage management to preserve what value remains.

Getting fields ready for next year through fall weed management and fertilizer applications will also be challenging.

The nutrient management equation for farmers is even more complicated than usual. Fertilizer prices are between 15 per cent and 30 per cent higher than earlier estimates, and commodity prices are lower across the board. Couple that with reduced yields and quality losses and breakeven will be even more elusive for operators.

However, as provincial farm management specialist Darren Bond pointed out in a webinar last month, producers have some options to reduce the hurt.

They could delay putting fertilizer down this fall in the hope prices will soften going into spring. Spring-applied fertilizer also tends to be as much as 20 per cent more efficient in feeding the crop because less is lost into the atmosphere.

Bond isn’t ruling out the possibility of a drop in prices, but he doesn’t think it’s likely. “Generally speaking, the previous fall is cheaper than the spring, just because in the spring it’s go time, and that’s when you need it,” he said. “And there’s a little bit more supply logistics constraints and a little less negotiating power on the producer’s end of things.”

It’s tempting for producers to save by simply buying less fertilizer, practically guaranteeing lower yields — unless there are enough residual nutrients left over from this year’s crop or those cutbacks are applied to acres that don’t produce well for other reasons.

Bond suggested farmers focus on maximizing the impact of their fertilizer dollars rather than making blind decisions looking at one side of the ledger.

The concept of “fertilizer-use efficiency” has received increasing attention in recent years as concerns over climate change have raised the profile of agriculture’s greenhouse emissions. Farmers are increasingly encouraged to practise the 4R’s of nutrient management: right product, right rate, right time and right placement.

By far, a farmer’s most valuable investment in next year’s nutrient management is collecting samples of soil this fall to test for available nutrients. Industry surveys indicate while about 80 per cent of farmers soil test some of the time, only about 40 per cent test their fields every year.

It’s one more job to do in an already busy season, but it pays off. “Soil testing is really cheap when we compare it to how expensive fertilizer is,” Bond said.

Interestingly, many of the options that can save farmers money in times like these are the same recommendations touted to improve the sector’s environmental sustainability.

Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com