NISKU, Alta. – Prairie producers would do better to compare their soil characteristics to those found in Russia, Siberia or Mongolia than those found in the U.S. northern plains.
Yet many agronomic recommendations come from American Great Plains states, which often don’t work in Canadian conditions, said Rigas Karamanos, manager of agronomy for Westco.
“We are fortunate to have higher levels of microbes than most agricultural areas of the world. And we have a high organic matter content. That means we have a sustainable level of food for the microorganisms and the population of microorganisms will sustain itself,” said Karamanos at a recent direct seeding conference in Nisku.
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.
Every one percent of organic matter can equal 20 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer, he said, because each one percent organic matter can provide 10 pounds of usable nitrogen.
“Commercial fertilizers have a use efficiency of about 50 percent. So if you put on 20 lb. of fertilizer, your crop only has access to 10 lb. in the year of application.
“Part of the reason this is not widely understood is that when farmers do soil tests, everything is driven by the soil sample itself. There are no tools readily available to make that information relevant to each specific field. So in reality the soil test process is actually incomplete because it lacks that field information.”
Karamanos said the estimate of available nitrogen in a producer’s field is nothing more than that – an estimate. It is based on a calculated average for that soil type and location. This basis may have nothing to do with the available nitrogen in any given field during any given year.
“What happens when the average organic matter for a district is five percent, but the producer doing the test has been in zero tillage for a long time and his fields have an average of eight percent organic matter?” Karamanos said.
“If that person follows the fertilizer recommendations, he is actually overfertilizing.”
He said a farmer with eight percent organic matter must calculate how much nitrogen the soil will generate because of the organic matter. A producer already encountering lodging problems should consider that a clue that too much nitrogen fertilizer is being applied.
Karamanos said organic matter percentage relates to the number of years since the land was first cultivated and how long it was in 50-50 fallow, continuous cropping or direct seeding.
“A recent switch to zero tillage might not show a big jump in organic matter, but if the field has been no-tilled for 10 or 15 years, it can make a noticeable difference.”
He said that before cultivation, most regions on the Prairies started with organic matter in the range of 10 to 12 percent. In some areas, such as the thick black soils in areas of central Alberta, it is still common to find fields with eight percent organic matter.
“At the university experimental farm, we often found nine and 10 percent organic matter. It depends so much on the history of each individual field. Side by side fields might have very different levels of organic matter because they have different histories, so they will require different levels of applied fertilizer,” he said.
“In the dark brown soil zone, for instance, the soil labs look at an average organic matter of 2.9 or three percent. But there are some fields with five or six percent organic matter in the same area. This is information the farmer needs to be aware of.”
Agronomic recommendations that originate from the United States, just south of the 49th parallel are, in fact, genuinely foreign to Canadian prairie soils, he said.
“We so often find that agronomic recommendations from other parts of North America and even from our neighbouring Northern Great Plains states like North Dakota or Montana are not relevant on the Canadian Prairies.”
The climate zones run generally in diagonal bands across the Canadian Prairies from northwest to southeast.
“The north-south distance is so crucial in determining climate zone and soil zone.”
He said a north-south distance of about 150 kilometres could make a major change in an agronomic recommendation.
He cited temperature as a major factor.
“Half the year we’re frozen. All the biological processes are much slower as you move further north. As a consequence of this, the breakdown of organic matter is slower. And organic matter is the food for our microorganisms. Our microbial population plays a huge role in our soil fertility.”
Karamanos said in warmer regions of the world where agriculture has taken place for centuries, topsoil has generally been depleted or eroded away.
“In these soils, the organic matter is gone. The microbial populations are non-existent or just barely detectable.”
