BRANDON – Enhanced efficiency fertilizers sound like just the thing for the progressive prairie producer.
But “growers in the Prairies have already adopted a lot of the best management fertilizer practices that help you to use fertilizer quite well,” Manitoba Agriculture specialist John Heard said at a Manitoba Ag Days seminar. About 75 percent of farmers band their fertilizer rather than broadcast it.
“That means you’re already doing a pretty good job as far as management.”
Enhanced efficiency fertilizers are promoted as a group of fertilizers that are less likely to be lost to a crop after application. Some are designed so that nitrogen breaks down more slowly in the soil, allowing a crop time to absorb more before it is lost. Others stop fertilizers like phosphorus from becoming tied up and inaccessible to the crop.
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Heard said some critics think enhanced efficiency fertilizers are a questionable crutch.
“Cynically, some might look at these and say really all this is doing is replacing doing the right thing at the right time and putting fertilizer in the right place,” he said.
“A lot of them could be Band-Aids to help you put on fertilizer in the wrong place, and it just costs a little more to do so.”
However, Heard said there are “some selected fits” for enhanced efficiency fertilizers. Producers need to balance a complex mix of factors, such as how likely they are to lose nitrogen or phosphorus in their soil, how much seedling damage they face and how much time, equipment and labour they could save by using them.
Some enhanced efficiency fertilizers allow for broadcasting, so farmers are able to reduce their management of a field if they use one.
“Some of this is a substitute for capital investment in equipment,” said Heard.
“Some of the safer products maybe you can single shoot or seed place more of your fertilizer. Simpler equipment makes some broadcast work as well as banded.”
But with most prairie farmers already using banding to maximize their fertilizer efficiency, Heard thinks the enhanced efficiency products will be more popular south of the border.
American farmers “haven’t needed to become as lean and mean as prairie growers,” said Heard.
“For those who haven’t been forced to become as efficient … they’re going to see more benefits to these products.
“The benefits may be more to those who haven’t yet moved on to banding and better placement.”
