Optimizing Fertilizer Decisions To Help The Bottom Line

The right fertilizer decisions can help optimize yields while protecting the bottom line at the start of every growing season.  Lyle Cowell, the senior agronomist for Nutrien, talks about the company’s new dry fertilizer calculator on the eKonomics Website.

“It's a tool that Nutrien has provided to farmers and to agronomists to help understand the rates and costs of dry fertilizer," Cowell said.  "Now it depends on where you farm. In some cases, farmers will apply each dried fertilizer by themselves.  In some areas of North America, those fertilizers might be placed in a blend.  It allows you to enter in the fertilizers that you're going to use on the farm, enter in the cost of each one of those fertilizers, and then very quickly and accurately tell the farmer the cost and the rate of each of those fertilizers that are going to be required on the farm.”

Soil Tests Are Important For ROI

Finding the right blend of fertilizers for the nutrients your soil needs can be challenging, Cowell pointed out.

“It can be a bit of a problem to actually sit down with fertilizer products and understand what rate of each one you need to apply to achieve the recommended rates of N, P, K, and S fertilizer, and so this takes the arithmetic out of it," he said.  "It allows you to quickly take that soil test, enter in the pounds of N, P, K and S that you want to apply per acre with the fertilizers that you intend to use.  It does the mathematics, does the arithmetic for you to make a quick and accurate rate of application. It also calculates your cost of the fertilizer and cost of the fertilizer and the cost of the nutrients applied.”

Helping Farmers Deal With Rising Input Costs

Cowell added the dry fertilizer calculator isn’t the only one available on the eKonomics Website.

"We have a lot of calculators, and they're calculators that are targeted to what farmers care about," Cowell said.  "What do farmers care about? Well, one of the most important things they care about, of course, is the weather, and there is a rainfall app and a growing-degree calculator. There is the brand-new input planning calculator, and all farmers should care about the cost of production on the farm, and that's what the input planning calculator is all about. You can enter in your cost of production and understand the profitability of your farm."

Don't Use More Fertilizer Than Needed

He added Nutrien is continuing to add more calculators to help farmers maximize their fertilizer usage every year.

“There are a number of other calculators, such as nutrient removal calculators," said Cowell.  "For those farmers who use anhydrous ammonia, there are some great calculators there to help understand rates of application, and we're simply continuing to add new tools on the platforms just to help our farm customers better understand fertilizer use.”

Click Here to check out the eKonomics calculator.

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