Potential for fertilizer use efficiency spikes alongside prices

Farmers may have difficulty seeing the opportunity lurking in the fertilizer prices skyrocketing alongside those military drones soaring over the Middle East.

After all, these are times that test the fortitude of any optimist.

Farmers can’t do anything about the sticker price on crop nutrients, but the latest annual Fertilizer Canada survey tracking their use suggests they have more latitude to adjust their purchases.

The current economics around crop fertility may accomplish what environmental and climate change lobbyists have been advocating for years. Farmers may be driven to accept the science and adopt different technologies — both new and old — that improve how efficiently they feed their crops.

If they get it right, they will save money, still hit target yields and reduce how much fertilizer is lost to the environment through leaching into waterways or to greenhouse-gas emissions. However, potential is far from the current reality.

Fertilizer Canada has been tracking farmers’ uptake of 4R Nutrient Stewardship since 2014. This is a set of management principles that can be tailored at the farm level to guide fertilizer applications using the right source, right rate, right timing and right placement.

While 64 per cent of the survey respondents report believing they are compliant with 4R strategies, nearly 80 per cent have no formal plan in place, and only about 28 per cent (or 13 million acres) across Canada currently meet the 4R criteria.

It’s important to note these so-called “best management practices” have evolved over the past four decades as the industry’s understanding of soil fertility dynamics has grown and new technologies such as soil mapping and variable-rate application have matured.

The underlying production politics have changed, too.

In the 1980s, they were all about “feeding the world,” and the focus was on maximizing yields at almost any cost. In the 1990s, they entered the “save the planet” era when the focus shifted to reducing the negative effects of modern agriculture on the environment, such as the growing eutrophication of Lake Winnipeg.

Lately, it’s been the climate change agenda driving the push for better nutrient management. The BMPs were reorganized around the 4R approach as a strategy to voluntarily curtail greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture — before the regulators moved in.

However, it turns out maximizing yields doesn’t necessarily equate with the best overall returns. Practices that protect the environment or fend off climate change are laudable, but impractical if they undermine this year’s bottom line.

It’s hard to take on more risk without knowing it will pay off.

“Results from across the country show that lack of equipment, cost, education and time are the main reasons why farmers are not currently adopting or implementing 4R practices,” Fertilizer Canada says. “In Western Canada, a lack of proven benefits was also stated as a barrier to adoption.”

For example, enhanced-efficiency fertilizers — products that stabilize or delay nutrient release — potentially reduce emissions by 15 to 35 per cent, but using them costs an extra $30 per acre.

Although their use is trending up, many farmers still see them as cost-prohibitive, especially since their correlation with increased yields is vague. “The greatest challenge to achieving basic 4R compliance is the ‘Right Rate,’ due to growers not setting field-specific nitrogen rates,” the report says.

That’s not surprising, considering only about 25 per cent of farmers annually test their soils for nitrogen and phosphorus reserves. About half test every one to three years. However, there are about one-quarter of producers who test less frequently than every four or five years, or not at all.

A high proportion of the fertilizer used in Western Canada is applied using generic recommendations and guesstimates of crop uptake. It’s a bit like running a household without ever checking your bank balance.

Soil testing costs as little as $1 per acre, so the potential return on investment is high. And it sets the stage for a host of other changes that potentially pay even bigger dividends.

More farmers may soon realize that the costs of maintaining the status quo are more daunting than the risk of making a change.

Laura Rance is editor emeritus for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com