Bill Raun has dedicated the past 14 years of his career to converting plant-nitrogen data into practical information that wheat growers on the northern Great Plains can use to manage their crops.
“We regularly put $10-$20 per acre into a guy’s pocket every year if he puts the N-rich test strip in each field and then uses the GreenSeeker information to make his fertilizer decisions,” says the Oklahoma State University agronomist.
The nitrogen-rich strip is a control pass that has a high rate of nitrogen that will max out a crop’s ability to use nitrogen.
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Other areas of the field are compared to the maximum nitrogen strip to gain an understanding of how much more nitrogen is economically viable.
Raun said the extra money a farmer pockets from the nitrogen-rich strip and the GreenSeeker are a combination of lower input costs and higher yields.
In the fall of 2004, Raun toured a number of Saskatchewan research sites that have begun using GreenSeeker technology to develop better nitrogen management strategies for growers.
He spoke enviously of the soil that he found.
“Some of those Canadian soils I saw had high organic matter up around three or four percent and higher. If you get a warm wet spring, there’s enough nitrogen from the rainfall and mineralized from the soil organic matter to supply all the nitrogen for a maximum yield that summer.”
However, he still had a word of caution.
“If it’s a cold dry spring, the environment isn’t going to deliver anything for free. In those years, you have to get out there and apply all the N that your crop needs. And it changes every year. No two years are ever the same. That’s why you need a method to measure the nitrogen use efficiency of the plants.”
He said the Northeast Agricultural Research Foundation’s work in Melfort shows that if enough nitrogen has been applied over the years, farmers can go one or two years without nitrogen and still get good yields.
Although some farmers grow wheat without any nitrogen fertilizer, it remains the largest single input cost on most North American grain farms. And it’s a cost that will only increase, Raun said.
“Nitrogen fertilizer costs are driven by natural gas. You may have a natural gas well right down the road from your farm, but nobody’s giving the stuff away. The price of natural gas is set by the world market, and I expect it will only go up.”
He said while cost is one big factor in nitrogen management, the environment is another big factor that will eventually affect every farmer in North America. Excess nitrogen escapes into the environment in many ways and governments will eventually expect it to all be accounted for, he added.
“We’re not trying to put any fertilizer dealers out of business. That’s not the deal. But in my opinion, it’s the dealers who should be buying these GreenSeekers and setting up the N-rich strips and helping farmers do a better job of managing their nitrogen.”
On many farms, the $10,000 GreenSeeker price tag can easily be recovered in one growing season, he said.
