A soil test might tell farmers what their crops will need, but will it pay to fertilize to that level?
A new calculator will help provide the answer.
Manitoba’s agriculture department will soon offer a spreadsheet calculator that will give producers a place to start when deciding how much nitrogen to apply. The program shows producers at what point their nitrogen investment delivers the greatest economic benefit.
Agronomy researcher Rigas Karamanos of Viterra created the calculator with funding support from Manitoba’s Agri-Food Research Development Initiative.
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He based the system on 250 soil studies and field data from Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan. The calculator makes it possible to estimate the most profitable level of nitrogen fertilization for barley, wheat and canola crops, including recent canola hybrids.
Karamanos recently told agronomists attending a Manitoba meeting that the program isn’t focused on individual sites. Rather, it creates an average estimate for three soil types.
The calculator provides data for arid, dry and moist soil areas.
“Our data reaches out to the Yorkton area and covers all of Manitoba, but if you are in a moist area of Alberta, say Calgary to Olds, you could expect similar results,” he said. “The same could be said for the sandier soils in southwestern Saskatchewan or southeastern Alberta as being arid, like parts of (southwestern) Manitoba.”
The calculator allows producers to enter expected crop and fertilizer prices, existing available nitrogen in the soil and crop type. It then uses average yield data for a particular soil type to estimate the net per acre financial return. It also estimates total increased crop yield in bushels and total net for the crop. Comparing profitability between barley, wheat and canola isn’t the calculator’s main goal, but it can be used for that purpose.
The program is based on crop varieties, yield expectations and experience that are more recent than what was used to create the 20-year-old provincial nitrogen application guidelines that producers now use.
Producers will be able to download the calculator at www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/research/ardi.
