NORTH BATTLEFORD, Sask. – A Saskatchewan farmer is improving his liquid fertilizer application approach in hopes of increasing yields without increasing input costs.
Darin Schaefer, who farms 9,000 acres with his father and brother near Meota, was one of the first producers in the area to switch to liquid fertilizer 10 years ago.
Now he’s taking it one step further with a newly designed dual application system, which he says is the first of its kind in Canada.
Schaefer bought the Liquid Systems Alliance 2126 late last year. The Australian designed device arrived mid-March.
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The Alliance 2126 is a full auto rate dual liquid system built with stainless steel components to resist corrosion.
It can be used with GPS mapping and auto track technology and features a five-section shutoff that can shut down one section at a time. The system can also be used to apply micronutrients and fungicides.
Schaefer mounted the device on a John Deere 1910 air cart. He will seed canola from the front tank and liquid fertilizer from the middle and rear tanks.
“What we’re doing now is splitting up where we put the nitrogen and where we put the phosphate,” he said.
“We couldn’t do it before because we only had one pump and one delivery system. Now we have two pumps and two delivery systems, and we’re putting phosphate right with the seed, and the nitrogen gets side banked so it ends up away from the seed.”
Schaefer hopes the new system will increase yields by one to three bushels an acre.
“That’s not huge, but in today’s prices, on our farm, with a two bushel increase, that will pay for this whole system more than once this year,” he said.
Local research done last year by Cavalier Agrow found that splitting fertilizer increased yields. More testing will take place this year, and Schaefer is one of five growers in two locations participating in the field studies.
He hopes to start seeding in late April. In the meantime, he’s dismantling his old fertilizer system and setting up the new one.
Liquid Systems owner Peter Burgess from Australia was in the area earlier this month to help Schaefer set up the system.
Burgess designed the 2126 with Schaefer in mind in response to a query from a local John Deere dealer.
“We’ve created a system which has precise peripheral control,” he said.
“Typically, the accuracy row by row on a second by second basis will be around about 95 percent.”
The Alliance 2126, which sells for $35,000 to $40,000, is the first Liquid Systems liquid fertilizer application device sold in Canada.
However, Pat Smith, ag management solutions consultant with JayDee Agtech, a group of Saskatchewan John Deere dealers, believes it will be the first of many.
Smith said liquid fertilizer has
become more common in the last decade, and farmers are starting to ask about Liquid System’s technology.
“It wouldn’t surprise me to see two or three more of these next year as people see what they can do,” he said.
“A lot of the machinery that’s around to do this isn’t that precise. Peter’s come up with something that does almost exactly what you want.”
Cavlier Agrow manger Martin Detillieux said liquid fertilizer is growing in popularity by three percent per year in Western Canada.
Most of the growth is occurring as anhydrous ammonia users switch to liquid fertilizer, he added.
Detillieux said consistency is one reason for the increased popularity: every drop of liquid fertilizer is the blend the grower wanted.
Splitting liquid fertilizers makes the application even more precise, and if testing this year confirms previous findings, it could result in a higher yield with the same amount of product.
“The beauty of this product is we’re not really selling anything new,” Detillieux said.
“We’re just putting it in a better place so that puts the benefit all into the farmer’s pocket.”
