AFFIRNM adapts to price squeeze

The prestige of high target yields has long been seen as one of the main reasons producers buy too much fertilizer.

“Some people seem to have a natural tendency to look at target yields rather than the economic impact of the inputs needed to get high yields,” says agronomist Len Kryzanowski, who is in charge of the Alberta Farm Fertilizer Information and Recommendation Manager program, better known as AFFIRM.

“High target yields are fine when you have low fertilizer costs and good crop prices, but margins today are too tight for that luxury,” Kryzanowski said.

Read Also

VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award

Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.

“Today, economics have to be the determining factor in fertility management.”

Kryzanowski was the driving force behind developing the AFFIRM software program that was launched in 1996. It was intended to be a farmer-friendly software system to evaluate nutrient inputs based solely on economic principles.

Although the information was derived from Alberta soil and climatic conditions and was aimed at Alberta farmers, Kryzanowski said the downloadable software has proven popular with Manitoba and Saskatchewan producers over the past decade.

“We based the program on something between 400 and 500 site-years of nutrient research in all soil and climatic conditions, so it can be quite specific to a situation on any particular farm in Alberta.”

Kryzanowski said the idea for a flexible, detailed nutrient management program grew out of a concern in the early 1990s that the large amount of nutrient management information that was on file was not readily available to farmers.

“Alberta Agriculture wanted to make it available in a format that allowed producers to make fertilizer decisions based on economics alone: production costs and commodity prices.”

He said the goal of nutrient management should be to make money rather than win bragging rights by growing a high target yield.

As well, Kryzanowski said soil testing has changed dramatically on the Prairies since Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba closed down their provincially run labs.

“The private labs do a good job, but they each have their own particular philosophies, and they may not have access to the full amount of nutrient research data required to make fertilizer recommendations for each situation.”

He said farmers needed a neutral tool to interpret recommendations made by the labs. They also needed recommendations that were relevant to their soil.

Although the original AFFIRM software presented a reliable balancing act of input cost versus commodity price, the emerging price squeeze told Kryzanowski that the computer model should be updated to better reflect the deteriorating economic situation.

The revised version of AFFIRM went on the web in August 2005 and contains a number of upgrades.

“The original version dealt just with individual fields,” Kryzanowski said.

“The new version can give us an economic analysis of the whole farm. If a producer has a limited input budget for 2006, and that’s quite realistic, you can plug the whole farm into the equation to see where the input money might give the best economic return.”

He said a producer can still do the traditional analysis of individual crop and field combinations, but the whole farm feature provides a better picture of how to best allocate input dollars.

Another feature of the revised program is the unique calibrations to custom tailor the information for each of the six soil test labs operating in Alberta.

A producer might have to work through recommendations from NorWest, EnviroTest, MidWest, Lakeside, Sandbourg or A & L., and each one might be different.

“When a soil test lab is making a recommendation, it is also bringing a certain philosophy on the type of recommendation. The methodology varies from lab to lab, especially for phosphorus and potassium. As a result, the recommendations can vary a lot. In the new version of AFFIRM, we take those different lab characteristics into account.”

Kryzanowski said other nutrients such as nitrogen and sulfur are more soluble and mobile, so producers don’t see as big a variance from the six labs. However, consistent sulfur readings are difficult to obtain, he added, and some labs may recommend it more than is necessary in case the levels are low.

“That’s not a very good reason, especially with the current economic conditions,” Kryzanowski said. “Some labs use blanket policies in their recommendations. That’s another thing that can lead to fertilizer recommendations that are higher than needed.”

Kryzanowski said organic matter and nitrogen mineralization have never been part of traditional soil test protocol. However, the latest thinking in nutrient management does take into account the possible nitrogen contributions from mineralization.

“The new AFFIRM software looks at organic matter. We’ve incorporated analysis for nitrogen mineralization. We want to try to estimate how much nitrogen is mineralized and becomes available to the crop during the growing season.”

Manure is one area that the program doesn’t cover in detail and Kryzanowski said he plans to change that in the next year or two.

He said he is also working to incorporate spring moisture conditions and tentative rainfall scenarios that may occur during the growing season.

Kryzanowski emphasized that although the base data is all from Alberta, it can also be relevant in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

“It can probably be stretched all the way into Manitoba, but keep in mind that the data is based on soil and climate in Alberta. Anyone outside of Alberta is free to use AFFIRM, but they have to realize that the specific soils and climate information may not apply to their farm.”

However, he said the analytical process used in the program is universal. AFFIRM has been used by farmers in the United States and other similar climates worldwide, he added.

“Down the road, I’d like to expand it to make it more user-friendly and more relevant to conditions outside of Alberta.”

The AFFIRM software can be downloaded free of charge by anyone with internet access. Once installed on the user’s computer, privacy of information is assured because there is no further link to the website.

System requirements for AFFIRM: