The day is coming when farmers will need to more closely manage their use of crop nutrients, not only because of rising fertilizer costs but because of greater demands from the public and government.
Cam Dahl, chair of the Crop Nutrients Council, sees a growing federal emphasis on environmental issues through the agricultural policy framework. He said all levels of government are becoming concerned about nutrient runoff and its effects on the environment.
“This green government agenda is largely being driven by the public, who have taken a growing interest in farming practices across Canada, and who demand strict environmental stands and accountability from the industry,” Dahl said in a discussion paper prepared for the council.
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The council’s formation drew little notice a year ago, yet it was symbolic of how important nutrient management has become in Canada.
One of its aims is to demonstrate the beneficial practices being undertaken in agriculture. Members include crop and livestock producers and fertilizer manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
“As an industry, we recognize that these issues are going to have a significant impact on how all agricultural producers across the country manage their business,” Dahl said.
“In order to access future government programs, producers will have to demonstrate that their farming practices meet rigorous environmental standards and satisfy local public concerns.”
On the economic front, the costs for commercial nitrogen fertilizer, a staple of crop production, have been soaring.
Alberta urea prices for April were $421 per tonne, up 47 percent from 2000. The increase is due mainly to the rising price of natural gas, a key component of the manufacturing process.
At the same time, the supply of phosphorus, another staple, is gradually diminishing. Phosphorus is a non-renewable resource mined in the form of rock phosphate.
Products are already on the market that enhance nutrient efficiency, including Agrotain, a urease inhibitor used to slow the conversion of urea to ammonium, and JumpStart, a phosphate inoculant that can be used in wheat, canola and pulses.
The active ingredient in JumpStart is a naturally occurring soil fungus that grows on plant roots and connects crops to less available forms of residual soil phosphate.
Other innovative products are reaching the market or are under development, adding to the arsenal of tools available to producers for managing nutrients.
“In terms of bang for the research dollar, this whole area of nutrient efficiency is coming into its own now,” said Sanford Gleddie, vice-president of research and business development for Philom Bios, an inoculant company in Saskatoon.
“There’s a whole combination of things being worked on and none of them are exclusive.”
Research continues to refine nutrient management methods already available to producers. Part of it deals with the timing and placement of fertilizer, as well as improving upon soil tests and data interpretation.
Many clues about how farmers can better manage nutrients lie within their soil.
Cynthia Grant, an Agriculture Canada soil scientist in Brandon, is among those trying to discover what goes on in the soil and how that affects nutrient uptake and crop development.
She wants to learn more about conditions that influence nitrogen tied up in the soil and how much is available to the crop. A better understanding of how much organic nitrate nitrogen might be released and at what time during the growing season could help producers make more sophisticated decisions about how and when to apply fertilizer.
“I don’t think the magic bullet is always just adding something to the soil,” Grant said.
“I think it’s that understanding of the system and that understanding of the release.”
Crops now use about half the nitrogen in the first year it is applied. Researchers know some is banked in organic matter that is released to the crop in following years, but not all of it can be accounted for, allowing critics to charge that agriculture is harming the environment.
“We have gaps in knowledge that we haven’t been able to fill yet,” said Fernando Selles, an Agriculture Canada research scientist in Swift Current, Sask.
Farmers already have many of the tools needed to efficiently manage crop nutrients, and not all of them come in the form of retail products.
For example, Grant said planting a deeper-rooting crop in the year following a shallow-rooted crop is one way to keep nutrients from leaching into water tables.
It’s also important to use good management practices that maintain a healthy crop throughout the growing season. A healthy crop is better able to access and remove nutrients from the soil, limiting the likelihood of them gassing off into the air or leaching into ground water.
Despite economic and environmental pressures, farmers will need to continue using fertilizers. Selles said food production would fall by half if they quit, meaning every second person in the world would potentially starve.
“Fertilizer is here to stay,” he said.
“We cannot sustain life on this planet without it.”
The question is what limits will be placed on how farmers use it in the future.
