Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

One of our customers emailed in with some questions. They wanted to know about lower pH levels and higher iron levels & potential correlations and were seeing seeing sub Boron and excess irons in tissue samples.

After some research, near as I can tell boron and iron have no interactions. Both are however affected by calcium (See chart 1).

More calcium will reduce iron uptake. Boron and silicon help to increase calcium uptake.

In low pH excess phosphorus can reduce boron uptake

High potassium can reduce boron uptake

Boron deficiency

• Reduces growth of soil bacteria.
• Poor movement of sugar and carbohydrates in the plant.
• Affects timing of maturity, pollination, and reproduction.

Some old articles on boron and silicon:

• http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/proper-nutrients-are-key-for-proper-maturity-and-disease-management.cfm
• http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/boron-.cfm
• http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/silcon-the-forgoten-nutrient.cfm

What about Iron?

Injury due to high soil iron concentrations is not common under neutral or high pH soil conditions. Toxic situations occur primarily on acid soils (< pH 5.0) and where excess soluble iron salts have been applied as foliar sprays or soil amendments (poor quality limestone).

The first symptoms of iron toxicity are necrotic spots on the leaves. An unusual form of iron toxicity has been observed in Michigan on organic soils and high organic sands. Some iron-rich, low pH, low manganese soils create an environment in which an interaction between the iron and manganese in the soil reduces manganese uptake by plants. The symptoms observed on the plants are of manganese deficiency, but the low plant uptake of manganese is caused by excessive available iron in the soil.

http://web1.msue.msu.edu/imp/modf1/05209708.html

Toxicity Symptoms

Iron toxicity is primarily pH related and occurs where the soil pH has dropped sufficiently to create an excess of available Iron. (I think this statement is wrong, not low pH, low calcium is the issue cmd)

As with some other nutrients, the visible symptoms of Fe toxicity are likely to be a deficiency of another nutrient. Fe toxicity can also occur when Zinc is deficient, or the soil is in a "reduced" condition caused by very wet or flooded conditions. Excess Fe can result in Dark green foliage, stunted growth of tops and roots, dark brown to purple leaves on some plants (e.g. bronzing disease of rice). http://www.spectrumanalytic.com/support/library/ff/Fe_Basics.htm

High levels of nitrogen and potassium increase iron uptake

Excessive iron can reduce uptake of manganese, additions of sulfur improve uptake of manganese

High iron can reduce zinc uptake, and low zinc uptake is often found with low manganese

Iron excess:

• Interferes with phosphorus absorption.
• Requires use of higher levels of potassium to regulate.
• Can cause Zinc deficiency

To reduce problems with excess iron make sure you have adequate levels of calcium in your soils and the pH is at least 6.5. SupeCal SO4 gypsum and SuperCal 98G limestone are great ways to ensure proper nutrient uptake.

At Calcium Products we read everything we can get our hands on about soil fertility. We talk with anyone who will teach or listen. We would like to introduce you to 5 of those people and in our estimation 5 of the top consultants in the country. 

Gary Zimmer, Midwestern Bio Ag

Neal Kinsey, Kinsey Agricultural Services, Inc

Phil Wheeler, Ph.D. Crop Services International

Mike Amaranthus, Ph.D. Mycorrhizal Applications, Inc.

Jon Frank, International Ag Labs

We have been lucky enough to have had the chance to visit and learn from each of these consultants first hand. Now is your opportunity to learn from them. All five were recently featured in the July 2010 magazine Acres USA in the article titled 

Top 5 Mistakes in Fertilizer Application

Reprinted with permission from Acres U.S.A., P.O. Box 91299, Austin, Texas 78709 (512) 892-4400, Subscriptions: $27/year.  For sample copy of Acres U.S.A. call 1-800-355-5313.  www.acresusa.com

What links these guys together? They have all discovered through their hard work, cooperation with clients and years of on farm testing, the power and importance of calcium in the soil and how it impacts yield. We encourage you to stop by their websites or visit with them at trade shows and field days.

A big thank you to the staff at Acres U.S.A for letting us reprint this article!

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

You have likely seen several articles about the need for continued increases in food production to meet a growing population.  Dr. Harold Reetz, formerly with the International Plant Nutrition Institute, recently wrote a very good article about the need for new champions to help raise the yield bar.  Please read more here: http://www.fluidjournal.org/article1.php

I have an enormous respect for the farmers & others who have been seen as stretching the yield barrier.  I grew up surrounded by farm magazine articles about fantastic corn yields by Herman Warsaw and Francis Childs.  Recently Kip Cullers has been doing the same with soybeans.  We definitely need to continue striving for more production, but we also need to verify that we grow food that is healthy & nutritious.  Many farmers, agronomists, & consultants are working together to help in this effort, recognizing that there is more to a successful outcome than just the "Big 3" nutrients.

Glen Howell is a contributing writer of Yield Starts Here, a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. Glen is an agronomist & sales representative at Calcium Products. Find additional articles by Glen and other writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/

Glyphosate & crop nutrient interactions have been a topic of conversation during many of my recent visits with agronomists & dealers.  Some articles that discuss this in more detail:

http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/losing-the-glyphosate-resistant-pigweed-battle-we-can-help-you-get-back-in-the-fight.cfm

http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/controling-3-major-yield-robbers-in-2010.cfm

http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/glyphosate-induced-micronutrient-deficiency.cfm

I also found this article by Dr. Don Huber a very good summary of what is going on: http://www.fluidjournal.org/1gsdgfs-S10/S10-A4.pdf

There is an interesting article in the July issue of No-Till Farmer .

Glyphosate resistant pigweed Georgia

"No-Tiller Losing Pigweed Fight"

Dyersburg, TN, farmer Eddie Anderson a 15 year veteran of No-Till PLOWED under 1000 acres to combat glyphosate resistant pigweed. Also in the article "glyphosate resistance is the single largest threat to production agriculture."

I cannot imagine undoing 15 years of work due to a weed control issue.

We have a customer and crop advisor that is working in Georgia and has seen some tremendous results with SuperCal 98G as part of his comprehensive soil restoration and fertility improvement program.

I believe that these pictures demonstrate that the practices that Verity farms promote can help you combat glyphosate resistant pigweed.

Additions of SuperCal 98G help eliminate Resistant Pigweed

In “Weeds and Why They Grow” (Jay L. McCaman), its shown that pigweeds grow best in low calcium soils. We know through work done by Dr. Don Huber and many European researchers that glyphosate is a strong calcium chelator, making it unavailable to plants.

Howard and the Verity farms staff can explain how they have helped farmers combat weeds, disease and improve yields though better soil fertility principles. He can be reached at: 712-567-4145.

On a final note here is a like to what he has accomplished in Iowa. http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/field-day-update_-verity-farms.cfm

In my short but busy career in agriculture (crop scouting, production seed, insecticide sales, and agronomy sales) I have never seen roots like Howard has achieved. 

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

 A great article from No-Till.com on making sure you get the most out of your glyphosate.

http://www.no-tillfarmer.com/pages/Search.php?type=all&search=glyphosate

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

Why would a Calcium Manufacturer care about silicon? 

We are in the business of growing more and better crops. Anything that can help do that and improve calcium uptake deserves our (and your) attention.

Check out this great article by NTS out of Australia on Silicon. It's a little long by our standards but worth the effort.

A major mineral is missing in many soils and most soil tests do not even monitor its presence. This mineral can increase stress resistance....click for more...

Additional Related Articles from Calcium Products:

Proper Nutrients are Key for Disease Resistance

Silicon The Forgotten Nutrient - Pick up by AgProfessional.com

Boron

Can Calcium Help Defend Soybeans from White Mold?

20 Mineral Elements for Plant Growth

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

With the recent rainfall events, now is a great time to make sure that the nitrogen you applied earlier is still there. 

Jim Fawcett, ISU Extension Agronomist, posted some comments about doing this www.iowafarmertoday.com/blog/?p=732

The Iowa Soybean Association, through their On-Farm Network, has some great information on the impact of spring rainfall on nitrogen.  You can review their 2010 Conference Presentations here http://www.isafarmnet.com/2010OFNConfPresentations/ofnpresentations.html.  Iowa's guide for nitrogen recommendations is http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM1714.pdf 

Ohio State University has 5 questions to Help Evaluate Your Nitrogen Loss http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/inputs/fertilizer/five-questions-evaluate-nitrogen-loss-0525/

Remember that plant available sulfur is in the sulfate (SO₄)^- form, which makes it susceptible to leaching.  Make sure to include some sulfur (like SuperCal SO4) in your sidedress application!

We are always looking for new products and ideas to help farmers increase yields, quality and sustain the soil. We think humates and humic acid products are something you should look at.

For more on what humates are.

Here is a short list of Humate Benefits:

• Improved Water Retention, and water holding capacity
• Humates can hold up to 20 times their weight in water. 
• Humic substances can enhance the release of fixed K from montmorillonite soils.
• Addition of humic acids can increase P uptake by 25%.
• Humic substances will increase length, and number of lateral roots, seedling growth after germination, nutrient availability and nutrient uptake.
• These substances also affect a wide range of enzymatic processes

HumaCal is a uniquely synergistic pelletized humate product made with calcium and sulfur. It naturally and effectively provides nutrients, chelating agents, buffering properties and biological stimulation to soil. HumaCal improves plant uptake of soil nutrients, stabilizes nitrogen, stimulates root growth and mass, and increases soil water holding capacity in various agricultural, turf and ornamental applications.

HumaCal’s unique pelletizing process allows clean, virtually dust free applications. These all-natural products are NOP approved and OMRI listed. HumaCal is non-toxic and non-corrosive.

HumaCal can be applied alone or blended with other fertilizers. HumaCal pellets are tightly screened for accurate blending with other fertilizer ingredients and precision application with any dry fertilizer spreader. HumaCal is recommended as part of a regular soil fertility regime and may be applied anytime, even at planting.

Written by Greg Ervin, MS CCA, Regional Sales Representative

Achieving high yields consistently is the ultimate dream of most growers.  As we look ahead to the 2010 crop year, it is important to take time to identify potential yield robbing factors and establish actions for offsetting these negatives as they arise.  With plans in place, growers maximize the highest yield potential under their control.

What are some of the looming yield robbers farmers face in 2010?

The following are three concerns I heard from growers this winter:

Emergence problems associated with residue management.  If last year’s residues are only partially broken down and look to present a problem in consistent seed spacing and depth placement , consider creating a more conducive seed bed . This can be done through the use of light tillage and/or the use of Calcium in the forms of Gypsum (for higher pH soils) or Calcium Carbonate (for lower pH soils).  This added soluble Calcium leaches away soil toxins, leaving a soil structure that does a better job of managing moisture and providing more air to soil micro-life.   It also frees tied-up key nutrients from residues and soils making them more available to plants throughout the growing season.  

Soil micro-life is important to the efficient breakdown of plant residues.  With current herbicide technology involving Glyphosate, much of the beneficial micro-life in soils has been reduced to levels where efficient residue breakdown is not occurring (Huber 2010).  Spring and Fall residue treatment programs aimed at enhancing soil micro-life may be logical steps for growers to implement as means for reducing residues and reclaiming plant available nutrients from residues and soils. 

Gypsum is a good fit when considering residue management.  The soluble Calcium aids in creating improved soil characteristics, while the 17% soluble Sulfur in Gypsum acts as an excellent readily available food source for plants and also for expanding micro-life in the soil, accelerating the breakdown of residues.  Calcium Products, Inc. SuperCal S04 is an excellent source of Gypsum for these applications.

Plant Micronutrient tie-ups associated with herbicide use.  Current herbicide programs involving the use of Glyphosate are creating severe Micronutrient tie-ups in plants and in soils (Huber, 2010).  These tie-ups lead to nutritional deficiencies of plants, starving them to the point of reduced standability, reduced yields and inefficient dry-down of harvested crops. 

With today’s understanding of the compounding effects of Glyphosate on soils and plants, I am advising growers to ensure plants have adequate micronutrients available to build strong plant immune systems to fight-off fusarium energized in soils by Glyphosate (Huber 2010).  The addition of Calcium to soils in the Spring or Fall assists plants in building strong cell walls from readily available plant food nutrients released in soils by soluble Calcium. 

Plant tissue testing is an excellent analytical tool available for insuring adequate nutrient availability throughout the growing season.  Taken ahead of Glyphosate applications, Micronutrient levels can be monitored through plant tissue testing and corrected by adding needed Micronutrients with Glyphosate at herbicide application times. 

Growers should not underestimate the importance of Micronutrients to sustaining plant health in the quest for more consistent higher yielding crops.  Calcium Products, Inc.’s SuperCal 98G Calcium Carbonate Liming product is an efficient and cost effective way of meeting Calcium needs of plants, soils, and correcting lower testing pH areas in farm fields.

Compaction from wet soils.  For many areas of the country, wet Spring and wet Fall seasons have been very common place.  With wet weather at planting and harvest times comes compaction from operating farm equipment over fields in less than ideal conditions. 

Deep ripping of heavy field use areas can be of help along with Spring or Fall broadcast applications of Calcium to address whole field soil structure development and repair.  Calcium may not eliminate all symptoms associated with sever compaction; however overall Calcium helps loosen soils, increases the movement of air and moisture more efficiently through soil profiles, and enhances soil moisture storing capacities.  This, along with providing a more conducive soil environment for the proliferation of soil micro-life, goes a long way in repairing distressed soils and reclaiming yields in field areas affected from compaction.

Give us a call to discuss the advantages and cost effectiveness of including SuperCal products to your lineup of inputs this growing season.   These products are essential to a well-balanced fertility program, aiding you in your quest for consistently higher yields.
 

Written by Greg Ervin, MS CCA, Regional Sales Representative

From:

CROP NOTES for March 30, 2010

Iowa State University Extension Information for Northeast Iowa
By Brian Lang, ISU Extension Agronomist
911 S. Mill Street, Decorah, IA 52101
563-382-2949
 

Great Time to Setup a Sulfur Fertilizer Strip-Trial
Research trials on sulfur fertilizer for corn in northeast Iowa show positive results about 100% of the time on sands, 70% of the time on silt loam soils, 60% of the time on loam soils, and only 14% of the time on clay loam soils (all of these fields were without any recent manure history).  If you are on a silt loam (Fayette, Downs) or loam soil, how do you know if you will benefit? 

The sulfur soil test is no help in determining sulfur recommendations.  Plant analysis works good for alfalfa, but not corn.  We recommend a simple sulfur fertilizer strip trial to help you see if sulfur fertilizer will pay on your fields.  It’s easy.  Get a spreader with Calcium sulfate (gypsum) set to spread about 100 lbs of product per acre.  That will give you about 16 lbs of sulfur per acre.  Spread on your fields of interest leaving a large gap between spreader passes.  E.g. make a 60-foot spreader pass, skip over 120 feet, make a spreader pass, skip over 120 feet, make a spreader pass.  Now you have 6 strips, 3 with sulfur and 3 without.  Do this on as many fields that you are interested in.
 

Calcium Products Tip: Many dealers carry SuperCal SO4 pelletized gypsum!

The importance of nitrogen to profitable corn production has been widely recognized for many years.  Since corn is a grass crop, additional nitrogen is often added to increase yields & profitability.  However, excessive nitrogen application is very expensive-both in terms of cost & environmental impact.  Dr. Kaustubh Bhalerao, agricultural engineer at the U of Illinois, believes that it is possible to "teach" corn how to fix its own nitrogen, through the use of synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology is a new area of research that combines science and engineering in order to design and build or "synthesize" novel biological functions and systems. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology). 

Dr. Bhalerao is looking at how to design a system that enable nitrogen fixing bacteria to communicate with the root systems of corn plants.  Article link: http://www.illinoisagconnection.com/story-state.php?Id=191

I believe this possibility has enormous potential consequences.  What do you think?

  Summary of Sulfur Strip Trials Conducted in Central and Northeast Iowa

Report extract:

Last fall Sulfur (S) strip trials were conducted by John Sawyer, Professor; Daniel Barker, Assistant Scientist; ISU Extension Field Agronomists Brian Lang, George Cummins, and Mark Wuebker. The product was aplied by Heartland Co-op, Innovative Ag Solutions, and Five Star Co-op.  Calcium Products, Inc. provided the SuperCal SO4 gypsum used in the central Iowa trials with Heartland Co-op.

RESULTS

Six of the ten field sites had a corn yield increase from the S application (Table 1).  The other four sites had no yield difference with or without S application.  This is a 60% response rate to S application, which is similar to other recent small plot research conducted in north central to northeast Iowa on S response in corn.  For the six responding sites, the average yield increase from S application was 9 bu/acre, with a range of 5 to 13 bu/acre.  These yield increases are large enough to more than pay for a S application (for corn, suggested rates are 15 lb S/acre for fine-textured soils and 25 lb S/acre for coarse-textured soils).

This initial strip trial work indicates that S deficiency is occurring across a wide geographic area of iowa from central to northeast Iowa, and at a frequency that justifies continued research on S fertilization and deficiency identification across Iowa corn and soybean production.

Calcium Products would like to thank everyone involved, especially the farmer cooperators!

In the Spring 2010 issue of Liquid Does it Better, from Agro-Culture Liquid Fertilizers, Cory Schurman the Agronomy Director for Agro-Culutre wrote a very nice article on balancing your soils for better yeilds.

Why would a liquid company talk about lime, sulfur, gyspum, and calcium? The answer is simple, guys like Cory are working for the farmer to help them raise a better crop. If reccommeding a product he doesn't sell increases yield, than you can bet he is going to let his customers know about it.

You can read Cory's article here and download past articles at http://www.agroliquid.com/newsletters/

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

 I attended a program on Tuesday hosted by F J Krob & Company (http://www.fjkrob.com/) in recognition of their 100th year in business.  It was a great program, & the room was packed with farmers wanting to stay informed about the fertilizer industry.

David Delaney, President of PCS (Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan) Sales, was the 1st speaker.  Some of his comments:

• Proper soil nutrition will be required to increase food production to match population growth.
• Low yields in developing countries reflect unbalanced fertility.
• Fertilizer will play a critical role in sustaining productivity of soils.

The second speaker was Dr. Kim Polizotto, Chief Agronomist for PCS.  He noted the short term effects of underfertilization.  They include:

• Yield Loss
• High crop moisture content at harvest
• Stalk/stem strength
• Disease reactions
• Crop quality, particularly in hay & pasture, cotton

He also discussed that Phosphorus (P) & Potassium (K) fertilization rates have not increased at the same rate as crop yields since 1980.

Questions from the crowd included concern about China's growing presence in the world demand picture, particularly with regard to their impact on fertilizer demand.  One question involved the possibility of China buying PCS.  Mr. Delaney's opinion was that the Canadian government would likely be very concerned about foreign ownership of their company.

I thought both speakers were very good & informative.  However, both speakers referred to balanced fertility only in regards to N-P-K.  I think that this is a common theory in the fertilizer industry, but one that I highly disagree with.  There are many more nutrients than just 3 involved in crop production ( http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/proper-nutrients-are-key-for-proper-maturity-and-disease-management.cfm).

Congratulations to F J Krob & best wishes for another 100 years in business!

Paul Helland, one our good friends at FC, in Rake Iowa sent us some interesting information. First off, Paul and his staff are tireless when it comes to putting in demonstration plots, walking fields and observing crop growth.

It's this observation of the crops that lead Paul to wonder why some ears in a row were stubby and some were not. Paul took samples of the ears and sent them to the lab.

In every almost every case, the large ears contain higher quantities of nutrients. Calcium is 3x higher, sulfur is 20% higher!

One may think that such small difference in the nutrients don't make much difference, however those small things add up. Just take a look at the picture!

Since these ears are from the same row there is no yield data, but I think it is safe to say the large ears would yield out 2 to 3 times that of the small poor ears. One other thing to think about, the higher mineral concentration of the larger ears makes it a better feed source, whether for animals or ethanol plants. The grain from the large ears will also store better, avoiding piles of rotting grain.

Thanks for the pictures and lab work Paul!

A few weeks back we discussed the importance of silicon in crop production. A recent study by Researchers from the Department of Food Science & Technology at the University of California, Davis has found that that beer is a rich source of dietary silicon. So go ahead and pop a cold one after a long day, not only have you earned it, but it has health benefits too.

Beer could also make a good silicon fertilizer as the silicon is in the soluble form of orthosilicic acid (OSA). However you would need 267 cans to equal a pound of applied silicon! A rather expensive fertilizer.

I have heard old-timers say for a healthy lawn pour a beer on it, could silicon be the reason?

Do to problems of links going bad, I have converted the online article to a PDF and saved it on our servers. You can find the article on the study here, http://www.calciumproducts.com/silicon_in_beer.pdf

In an unrelated study, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that sugar has a more important role in cell division in humans than previously thought. This is very interesting to me since at many of this winter's meeting many farmers have asked questions about adding sugar to their sprays and fertilizers.

We were always told by people doing this practice that it stimulates plant growth and soil biological organisms. The reason stated is it a food source for both. Maybe it is stimulating cell division in plants and microorganism as well?

For the same reason as above the web-page on the sugar study can be found here
http://www.calciumproducts.com/sugar_and_cell_division.pdf

And snow, as my friend Michael has said, "snow" is becoming a four letter word. I think I pulled my back shoveling last nights 6 inches. While I am getting sick of the snow, and driving this morning was a little treacherous, the fence lines and farm yards were really beautiful (next time I'll take a picture)! The days are also getting longer and spring will be here in no time!

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

Greetings from the No-Till conference in Des Moines. I just listened to Fred Below talk about achieving 300 bushels. Unfortunately he has only done that once, back in 1985. From there he goes to show his current research using high tech products to try and reach those goals.

His recommended additions add an additional $125 to the cost of an acre and add between 14 and 66 bu/a.

My take away, high tech might be worth it, but if you don't have the basics right, your wasting you money. Fred echos this with you must to do better at the basic to hit high yields.

I will add to this in further blogs, got to catch the next session!

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

I found this link on using BioChar to build soils and reduce CO2 emissions. Whether you agree or disagree with climate change, having high levels of soil carbon (not just organic matter, they are different) will make you soils more productive and increase your nutrient holding capacity. This was an interesting read, even though it is a little long.

http://www.miller-mccune.com/science_environment/the-dirt-on-climate-change-1651?article_page=2

Our new product TRIO has a small amount of leonardite (a naturally occurring carbon source). This product will help keep calcium in the root zone in soils that have low carbon levels, such as sandy soils.

If you have had experience using carbon in your fertilizer program or want to know more about TRIO, I'd love to hear from you.

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .

Over Christmas break I had a lively discussion with my brother-in-law (Andrew) about genetics and environment. Andrew is in med school studying to become a surgeon. He was adamant that genetics is 80-90% responsible for the outcome of your health.

I was adamant that genetics was only 10-20% and your environment was 80-90% of your outcome. My basis for this is that many farmers plant the same hybrid varieties and have such a different outcome from field to field. While some verities my be predisposed to higher yield, plant in the wrong location, the results are disastrous.

I don't know if corn is more susceptible to the environment than people, and Andrew is pretty sharp, and has always been at the top of his class, so I owe it to him to research his point of view. Since its a slow week, I thought a poll question would be a fun way to get input from a variety of view points.

Is soil fertility more important than genetics?

Let us know what you think, we will post the results next month.

How did the discussion end? Well, At the end of the night, Andrew and I agreed that the winner of our bowling match was not a good way to settle the argument and we would both research the topic more.

A few month back we posted on a farmer that was getting some tremendous results with SuperCal 98G http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/field-day-update_-verity-farms.cfm

Howard's corn made 214 bu per acre, on $195 of inputs, including seed! This was near La Mars IA.

Thanks for the update Howard!

This blog is a reprint of an article found in last months Dealer E-Letter.

Proper Nutrients are Key for Proper Maturity and Disease Management

Supplying proper crop nutrition will ensure that your crop reaches maturity. If dry down, test weight, stalk quality, or disease is an issue for your customers, start with your fertility program.
 
There are of course many more nutrients to ensure proper plant growth and development, but we think getting these 10 right (in this order) will have the biggest impact on health and yield.

Boron is necessary for cell wall formation, membrane integrity, calcium uptake and may aid in the translocation of sugars. Boron affects at least 16 functions in plants. Almost every soil report I have read is low in Boron! More on Boron here
 
Silicon is found as a component of cell walls. Plants with supplies of soluble silicon produce stronger, tougher cell walls making them a mechanical barrier to piercing and sucking insects.

Calcium activates enzymes, is a structural component of cell walls, strong cells helps fight of disease. It influences water movement in cells and is necessary for cell growth and division. Soil reports typically measure all calcium, making sure calcium is plant available is key.
 
Nitrogen too much can delay flowering and fruiting. It is essential and needed for amino acid formation, which effects every other plant function.
 
Magnesium is a critical structural component of the chlorophyll molecule and is necessary for functioning of plant enzymes to produce carbohydrates, sugars and fats. High soil magnesium levels interfere with uptake of other essential nutrients.
 
Phosphorus is essential for flower and fruit formation. Low pH results in phosphate being chemically locked up, over application results in zinc deficiency. Without phosphors, chlorophyll is not converted to sugar, resulting in purpling of corn.
 
Carbon is essential to converting chlorophyll into sugar and for plant respiration. Proper soil biology ensures that the plant receive a constant supply of CO2. 96% of a plant is carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen!
 
Potassium deficiencies result in low yields, mottled, spotted or curled leaves, scorched or burned look to leaves. Is necessary to keep nutrients flowing in the sap.
 
Sulfur is essential for all nutrients be plant available. Sulfur is a natural disease fighter. Many plants require as much sulfur as phosphors. 
 
Zinc is a component of enzymes including auxins (plant growth hormones). It is essential to carbohydrate metabolism, protein synthesis and internodal elongation (stem growth). 
 
Manganese is involved in enzyme activity for photosynthesis, respiration, and nitrogen metabolism. It can be tied up with applications of glyphosate.
 
This is of course a very quick look into the functions of each nutrient, give anyone of our reps a call to discuss these nutrients and more in greater detail.

BRT Ag and Turf, a Calcium Products dealer is having an educational meeting December 16-18th.

This is a three day event in Williamsburg, IA and includes Larry Acker, Dr. Dan Skow, Bob Streit, Dr. Michael McNeill, Dr. Arden Andersen, and Dr. Don Huber.

We are especially excited to have Dr. Huber in Iowa. Dr. Huber is Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at Purdue University. His research has shown how herbicides tie up micronutrients and what you can do to minimize yield loss and disease.

For more information click on these links or go to BRT website.

Registration and Information

Speaker Biographies

It is October 27th (my birthday), and I am acutely aware of the sizable acreage of crops remaining to be harvested in the Midwest.  I think back to previous years and how we always strived to be done harvesting by now, but often ended up finishing closer to Thanksgiving.  I also think about how we used to be satisfied (elated?) with a corn yield of 180 or a soybean yield of 45.  Not in today's environment.

My wife occasionally suggests that I am a pessimist.  I disagree, instead choosing the term realist.  The difference is that I think the critically important things, in whatever you are doing, get done.  Some of the less important ones do not.  The ability to identifiy & target the most important things are what make farmers, farmers.

I am in awe of the diversity, aptitude, skills, and persistence of the American Farmer.  From personal experience, I know that farmers somehow, someway, get things done, and done well.  This fall will be no different.  The harvest will be completed, crop nutrients will be applied, and some tillage will be performed.  Will everything get done?  No, but the things that need to get done, will.

A safe harvest to all!

I just opened my planner this morning, I have those Franklin Covey, day insert sheets so I can try and keep everything strait. One of the things I like best about it is that there is a quote on each days sheet. I like the ones from historical figures best. Today’s was from Ben Franklin:

This article from 60 Minutes is very compelling. Many think of by-product coal ash as harmless, but the EPA is not so sure and the companies that produce them can't prove that they are safe!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/01/60minutes/main5356202.shtml

Excerpts from the article.

Environmental scientists tell us that the concentrations of mercury, arsenic, lead and other toxic metals are considerably higher in coal ash than in ordinary soil. The summer heat can bake the ash into a fine talc-like powder that can wreak havoc on your lungs.

Asked if there are any environmental concerns, the executive told the mayor, "No, sir. We at Dominion Power are fully in compliance with all the federal and state regulations."

Two years later, an internal company study about handling the ash for the golf course recommended that workers use "impervious gloves" and "particulate-filtering respirators" due to "potential health...risks."

Coal ash disposal is regulated by the states, some of which have strict rules, some hardly any at all. The new head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, is reviewing whether the federal government should get involved by labeling coal ash a "hazardous waste," which would mean much tighter regulations and oversight.The industry opposes calling coal ash a hazardous waste. They're pushing for another solution: recycling.

Most power companies rely on recycling because it cuts the 130 million tons of coal waste every year in half. The industry calls recycling "beneficial use." "Ugh! Don't even… The only people it was beneficial for were for those utility companies that had to get that stuff off their hands because they were already in violation with stockpiling too much. That is what 'beneficial use' meant," Robyn Pierce said.

But the EPA in the Bush administration endorsed beneficial use and now coal ash is recycled in dozens of ways: as cement substitute, it's also placed under roads and in deserted mines and it's added to products from carpets to bowling balls to bathroom sinks.


While the industry says the uses have been studied, Stahl asked Lisa Jackson whether the EPA knows if some of the recycled products are safe.

"Schoolroom carpeting," Stahl asked.

"I don't know. I have no data that says that's safe at this point," Jackson replied.

"Kitchen counters," Stahl asked.

"The same," Jackson replied.

"Fifty thousand tons of coal ash byproducts have been used in agriculture. What's being done through EPA to look at the use of coal ash in agricultural products? Anything? Is there a study?" Stahl asked.

"I'm not sure that there's any study out there right now," Jackson said.

"How did we get to a place where coal ash is in products without anybody knowing?" Stahl asked.

"We're here, now, because coal ash at this time isn't a regulated material by the federal government," Jackson replied.
 

"But you're not saying they are safe. You're playing word games with me. You're not saying, 'They are safe,'" Stahl said.
 

"You want me to guarantee that…they're absolutely safe," Roewer asked.

"I think everybody…yes, I do," Stahl replied.

"Well, what I can say is the state regulations and the utility management practices are put in place to ensure with a goal of safe management of coal ash," Roewer said.

"I don't think many people really trust the utility industry, I'm sorry to tell you," Stahl remarked.

Roewer's reply? "You're not the first one to tell me that."
 

Cation ratios can help in identifying soil structure problems, and are a great tool for identifying problems. There is much research that has been done on the subject, most of which does not definitively show benefits to having the “right ratio” of Calcium to Mag. However many of these research papers also dicuss right N:S, MG:K, P1:P2 ratios.

Why are some ratios important and others not? Why are the proper ratios of nutrients important in animal and human nutrition and not in plant nutrition?

Research on Ca:Mg ratio was often based on total calcium and magnesium levels in a soil. The Mehlic 3 method of testing does not relate to the 'functional' fraction of calcium and magnesium in the soil, i.e. that proportion actively being exchanged between soil colloids, soil solution, plant roots, microbes etc.

A better way to truly determine Ca:Mg ratio would be to measure the soluble cations in the soil and take plant tissue samples. This would help to better determine a true plant available ratio. It is also important to point out that using Ca/Mg Ratios in isolation (without taking into account ppms) can lead to erroneous interpretations, calcium and magnesium levels can both be low, yet have an ideal ratio; or both can be high, yet have an idea ratio.

What is the correct Calcium to Magnesium ration?

As stated above, there is no definitive ratio, but our experience has shown that as long as the calcium and magnesium ppms are sufficient a Ca:Mg ration of 4:1 to 7:1 should offer a soil with better structure, better aeration, and better productivity.

Problems with high Mag Soils

Calcium is the element that causes the soil particles to move apart for aeration and drainage. Magnesium makes the particles stick together. One soil consultant has determined that is some soils the excess magnesium is held as trimagnesium ortho phosphate, Mg3(PO4)2-22H2O. Notice that the last part of the formula is twenty-two molecules of water. Is it any wonder that soils high in magnesium tend to dry and crack when water is tied up in a compound instead of available to plants? Note the two phosphates that are tied to the magnesium.

High mag soils cause potassium and calcium deficiency in plants. Soils with high magnesium tend to have poor structure. Typically these soils will have more sodium cations attached to the clay as well. Having high magnesium and sodium causes the clay particles to disperse when wet and set like concrete when dry.

The magnesium ions sitting on the clay surfaces have a 50% greater hydrated radius than calcium which causes these soils to absorb more water. This excess water tends to weaken the forces that hold soil particles to together resulting in less aggregate stability and greater dispersion of soil particles reducing infiltration rates and hydraulic conductivity (drainage). These soils tend to swell when wet and become very hard when dry, often forming a hard surface crust and becoming very difficult to till.
 
Excess magnesium causes a collapse of soil structure

Soils containing greater than 300 ppm of ammonium acetate extractable magnesium are considered high as well soils with base saturations greater than 15%. Soils that are saturated with magnesium can also show low potassium levels as of less than 100 ppm.

The addition of high rates of potash fertilizers can actually make matters worse and cause even more dispersion of soil particles. Potassium and sodium have similar properties, in sodic soils sodium causes lack of structure by causing dispersion of soil particles, soils tend to remain saturated and poorly drained.

For corn, 50-100 Mg ppm in soil and .25% to 1% in tissue is sufficient.

Correcting/Improving High mag soils

One solution for high mag soil is managing for soil quality with manures, crop rotation, and applying gypsum in an effort to displace magnesium. Gypsum is calcium sulfate, the sulfate ion mobilizes the magnesium out of the root zone, with calcium taking its place. Adding calcium carbonate can improve the structure of soil and build calcium levels faster.

Lime High pH Soils?
In the case of high mag soils the high pH is due to magnesium hydroxide, sodium hydroxides, and potassium hydroxides. pH has nothing to do with calcium, it only measures the hydrogen or hydroxide ion. Adding lime adds calcium, the stronger binding calcium cations displace the weaker held sodium (or magnesium) cations from the clay particles. Clay particles can then bond together with the calcium to form a well structured soil.

Application of potash in the starter at rates in the 30 pound range have shown much greater response than large application rates.  High rates of potash in the presence of high levels of magnesium (>600 ppm) can aggravate the dispersion of soil particles if crop rotation and manure additions are not practiced. Moderate rates of K applications are needed when potash is low to medium.

Guideline for Soil amendment use.

Photo credit DONTSOVA-PURDUE

Harvest is underway in many areas, and will rapidly pick up speed in the next few weeks.  I see other signs of fall as I travel these days.  The leaves are changing, the air has freshened, and fall application of fertilizer is underway. 

My fall checklist includes:

1. Winterize all equipment
2. Finish maintenance/pre-season inspections
3. Review application lists & field maps
4. Order SuperCal 98G & SO4

I anticipate a busy fall season for lime application, and have been encouraging dealers to bring in product as soon as they are able to do so.  I fully expect the fall movement to increase significantly in 1-2 weeks, just when the availability of trucks decreases.  Getting product in now allows for flexibility in inventory management, greater control over supply, and less chance of logistical challenges (i.e. less stress)!

Please be safe this fall.  Take a little extra time to remind others to be safe also.

12-17-09 UPDATE: Just spoke to Howard, the corn on this plot avg 214 bu. at 16 moisture! Way to go Howard!

On Monday I attended the Verity Farms Field Day. Howard is doing is really doing some tremendous things to and for his soil. The field that the following video was taken in is Corn on Alfalfa ground. Notice all the earth worm casting, worms, and worm holes. It has been a long time since I have seen a shovel able to be put into the soil its full depth. 

Fertilizer Applications:
 

What's really stunning is these results were acheived with so little applied fertilizer, no fungicide. Notice how green and blemish free the stalk is. There was absolutly no stalk rots to be found any where in this field! Expected yield is 200+ bushels.

We were very excited to be a part of the field day and see the dramatic changes that Howard's program and SuperCal 98G have achieved.  Please contact us or Verity Farms to find out how to return your soil to the soft fertile sponge it was ment to be!

*Pretty exciting that Howard will net close to $400 per acre this year ($3 corn*200 - $200 inputs).

Calcium Products has broken ground on it's third expansion in less than 2 years!

The new expansion will additional 98G storage, an additional 98G load out, and room for an additional pellet plant in the future. The addition is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year and operational for the Spring fertilizer run.

"Not only will this addition will allow us to load out trucks faster, it will give us opportunity to make custom products for our customers", stated Larry Moore, President of Calcium Products."

While this addition will give Calcium Products more storage it will not solve the lack of trucks during the fertilizer season. We also have programs in place to help our dealer expand their storage so they can be sure to have enough 98G or SO4 on hand.

If you have questions about increasing your storage contact your sales rep or give me a call!

Target Boron Levels

Depending on the crop, but for corn, shoot for 20 ppm in the soil. I have talked with many consultants in the past week and 5 ppm should be plenty. Boron can have negative impacts on soil biology when it gets to high. Many soils routinely test less than 5 ppm and in many cases under 1 ppm.

Read the whole article here http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/boron-.cfm 

The details are always hardest to manage. It’s getting the small things right that determine whether we are successful or not. While it is important to have  proper soil pH and available calcium. Many farmers overlook the small details; like understanding that micronutrients are the catalysts for big yield gains. Boron is the catalyst that makes calcium, nitrogen, magnesium, phosphourus, carbon, and potassium more available to your crop.

Only a few of Earth's naturally occurring chemical elements make up living matter. Just six of them; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and sulfur, make up for 99% of all living tissues. Nevertheless, other minerals or trace elements are crucial for all vital functions even if this may be in extremely low dosages. Some of these, such as iron, copper, cobalt, zinc or manganese, are required by all living forms. Boron is one of those crucial elements, proven essential for the structure of plants.

Any soil test you conduct should be a complete soil test such as Midwest Labs S3C test. That test includes, base saturation, including sodium, and a full micronutrient package. In many of the tests we look at, we see more and more test coming back with very low boron readings. Boron has been much overlooked in the past, but many are discovering the benefits of this micronutrient.

Boron Function

Adequate boron nutrition is critical for high yields and quality crops. The main functions of boron relate to cell wall strength and development, cell division, fruit and seed development, sugar transport, and hormone development. Boron affects sugar transport in plants, flower retention, pollen formation, and germination. Boron is needed in protein synthesis and is associated with increased cellular activity that promotes maturity, increases flower set, and fruit yield and quality. Boron also affects nitrogen and carbohydrate metabolism and water and sap flow in the plant.

Photosynthesis transforms sunlight energy into plant energy compounds such as sugars. For photosynthesis to continue, the sugars must be moved away from the site where they are made and stored or used to make other compounds. Boron increases the rate of transport of sugars to actively growing regions and to developing fruit (grain). Boron is essential for providing sugars which are needed for root growth in all plants and also for normal development of root nodules in legumes such as alfalfa, soybeans and peanuts.

Since boron is non-mobile in plants (like calcium), a continuous supply from the soil is required in all plant growing points. In mineral soils, release of boron is usually quite slow. Much of the available soil boron is held rather tightly by soil organic material. As organic matter decomposition occurs, boron is released with a portion being absorbed by plants, some leaching below the root zone area (especially in acid soil), or tied up under alkaline soil conditions.

Boron Deficiency and Excess

Boron deficiencies are found in acid soil, sandy soils, soils with low organic matter, and in regions of high rainfall. Borate ions (soluble boron) are mobile in soil and can be leached from the root zone. Boron availability also decreases on heavy clay and high pH soils. Soils with a high pH (at 7.5 pH boron becomes fixed) or which have just been heavily limed, have a limited amount of boron available for plant growth. Boron deficiencies are more pronounced during drought periods when root activity is restricted.

Plants deficient in boron continue to undergo cell division in growing tips, without cells changing into the proper type of cell. This results in cells that fail to becoming stem, leaves, and flower cells. As boron becomes deficient the vegetative growing point of the affected plant becomes stunted, deformed or altogether stop.

Boron does not often occur in toxic quantities in most arable soils. When toxic levels are reached, excessive boron can cause off color and stunting of plant growth. As boron concentrations in plant tissue increase to toxic levels, older foliage may exhibit leaf edge burning or necrosis. Some plants will also develop black spots on older foliage. High levels of boron can only be removed from soils through the leaching action of water flushing it below the active plant root zone.

Target Boron Levels

Depending on the crop, but for corn, shoot for 20 ppm in the soil. I have talked with many consultants in the past week and 5 ppm should be plenty. Boron can have negative impacts on soil biology when it get to high. Many soils routinely test less than 5 ppm and in many cases under 1 ppm.

For treating boron deficiency during the growing season apply 1-2 lbs of soluble boron. Plant tissue should read 2-75 ppm depending on the crop. More research will need to be conducted to further narrow the range.

Plant needs for boron can be applied as Granubor preplant broadcast to the soil or as Solubor or Solubor DF foliar sprays during the growing season.

Reference and Additional Reading

Boron, The Overlooked Essential Element

Boron is Essential for the Growth of Plants and Animals

US Borax

Midwest Labs Agronomy Handbook 

Last year Alberto Ferracuti, a coffee grower from El Salvador contacted me. He was having trouble getting good yields. I explained that I had no experience with coffee or soil from his region. He said that the people with experience in coffee had not helped him and wanted me to look at his soil samples.

After faxing me his soil tests we made recommendations. Due to the high cost of freight Alberto was unfortunately not able to use or products. He did follow our recommendations and he has called me twice this year to inform me of the dramatic improvements. Here is the last email I received from him.

Thanks for the note and call Alberto, helping farmers grow better yields and better quality is what it is all about!

While visiting with a dealer last week, I discussed the attributes of different sulfur fertilizer sources.  The final choice between ammonium sulfate and calcium sulfate came down to the cost for a unit (#) of sulfate sulfur.  Here is what my calculations showed (these prices are not suggested to be indicative of every particular situation, but only an example):

Ammonium sulfate (AMS), 21-0-0-24S, was costing $0.75 per unit of sulfur (nitrogen value set to 0).

Calcium sulfate (SO4), 0-0-0-17S-22Ca, was costing $0.59 per unit of sulfur (calcium value set to 0).

If the sulfur requirement for 5 Ton alfalfa removal is 30# (6# sulfur per Ton), the cost for sulfur nutrition from AMS was $22.50 per acre, with the SO4 providing the same 30# of sulfur, but for a cost of $17.70 per acre.  Net difference (savings) to the grower of $4.80 per acre.

Not a huge difference, but still a 20% decrease in cost.  With the economic challenges of livestock production today, every little bit helps.

SuperCal SO4, the right fit, right now. 

Have you heard about the climate divide?  That is a term sometimes used to describe the differences in energy use & the associated greenhouse emissions, between the United States and countries like sub-Saharan Africa.  A reference article on climate divide: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/health/02iht-climate.1.5109623.html

The term fertilizer divide is being used to describe the differences in fertilizer use between countries.  In a report published in the June 19 issue of Science, China is specifically chided for using too much, according to Peter Vitousek, a professor of biology at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.   Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/su-shm061609.php

"Some parts of the world, including much of China, use far too much fertilizer," Vitousek said. "But in sub-Saharan Africa, where 250 million people remain chronically malnourished, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrient inputs are inadequate to maintain soil fertility." 

In the report, Vitousek and colleagues compared fertilizer use in three corn-growing regions of the world-north China, western Kenya and the upper Midwestern United States.  The area in China used 525 pounds of nitrogen per acre (588 kilograms per hectare) annually in growing corn.  200 pounds per acre (227 kilograms per hectare) of excess nitrogen is released into the environment.  By comparison, Kenya only used 6 pounds per acre (7 kilograms per hectare), in a 2004 study. 

Statistics show that from 2003 to 2005, annual corn yields in parts of the Midwestern United States and north China were almost the same, even though Chinese farmers used six times more nitrogen fertilizer than their American counterparts and generated nearly 23 times the amount of excess nitrogen.

So why is the United States' farmer always the bad boy of fertilizer use?  Sounds to me like China deserves more scrutiny & Kenya deserves more support. 

Second cutting alfalfa is fast approaching and many are still fighting Yellow Rocket.

In many years the eaiest way to take care of weeds in alfalfa was to wait until first cutting. In the mowing process weed pressure is eleminated. But have you really done any good?

While weeds may not be visiable for the remainder of the year (in most years), you still have not solved anything. The soil conditions have not changed because you cut alfalfa. Also you give up quality of the first cutting, which is costing you money!

Second cutting is near, Yellow Rocket taking over

So this year cutting alfalfa didn't get rid of Yellow Rocket, you might choose to spray your alfalfa with a hherbicide. While this may get rid of the weeds, you will also have a harvest interval, and the possiblity of killing soil biology which will reduce yeilds.

Since spraying will cost $20-$30 per acre why not treat the soil imbalances which is causing the Yellow Rocket outbreak? SuperCal SO4 will reduce magnesium in the soil, making it drain better and reducing the amount of Yellow Rocket germination.

As an added benifite your adding calcium and sulfer, two of the most used nutrients by alafalfa. The increase in quality and tonnage will more than pay for the cost of the product.

Other Alfalfa Blog Articles

Fertilizing Alfalfa

More on Yellow Rockect  

Have you ever had cattle consume fertilizer?  It can happen, and depending on the product, can be a significant problem.  If it contains nitrate (ammonium nitrate or potassium nitrate), it can lead to nitrate poisoning.  Nitrate itself is not poisonous, but it is converted to nitrite in the digestive system.  According to Charlie Stoltenow, North Dakota State University Extension Service veterinarian, nitrite is 10x more toxic than nitrate. 

Nitrite is absorbed into the red blood cells and combines with hemoglobin to form methemoglobin. Methemoglobin cannot transport oxygen as effectively as hemoglobin, so the animal’s heart rate and respiration increase. The blood and tissues of the animal take on a blue to chocolate brown tinge, muscle tremors can develop, staggering occurs and the animal eventually suffocates.

“Fertilizer is good for plants, but not good for cattle,” Stoltenow says. 

I wonder what he thinks about using urea or urea-based feeds as a protein source in finishing cattle?

According to the article, the best way of preventing fertilizer-related nitrate poisoning in cattle is by controlling access to fertilizer. Avoid letting cattle graze immediately after spreading fertilizer and clean up fertilizer spills. Areas where the fertilizer spreader turns or areas where filling (and consequently spilling) take place may have excessive quantities of nitrate available to the cattle. Also, do not allow cattle to have access to areas where fertilizers are stored.

You can read more here:

 www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/pub/fg/news/2009/Fertilizer/

SuperCal 98G & SuperCal SO4 are produced from products that are commonly found in nature (calcium carbonate & calcium sulfate, respectively).  They are not toxic to humans or animals. 

Are you ready for hay season?

1st cutting alfalfa is underway.  Where I live in Northeast Iowa, the farmers have been working at it since Memorial Day.  I thought this would be a good time to review alfalfa's nutrient needs.

In general, alfalfa removes 12.5# Phosphorus (P), 40-50# Potassium (K), 30# Calcium (Ca), 6# Magnesium (Mg), 6# Sulfur (S) and 0.08# Boron (B) per ton of dry matter yield. Plants may remove higher amounts of these nutrients if soil test levels are in the High (H) or Very High (VH) levels.  This is known as luxury consumption.

Growing 5 Ton hay?  Then your crop will remove 62.5# P, 250# K, 150# Ca, 30# Mg, 30# S, 0.4# B.  With today's fertilizer prices, many growers are making sure that all nutrients are at optimum levels.  Sulfur deficiency is being diagnosed much more often than previous years. 

Where does SuperCal SO4 fit in?  With 22% Ca and 17% sulfate sulfur, it helps build and maintain plant structure, while also providing sulfur for use in protein synthesis.  I typically recommend 200# per acre annually.  This will provide 44# Ca and 34# S.  If you are experiencing problems with too much K in your forage, then increasing the amount of calcium available will help.  This has been a recurring problem with dairy cows in many operations.

SuperCal SO4, the right fit, right now.

As I drive down the road the sweet smell in the air reminds me summer is here. To me nothing says summer like fresh cut alfalfa (though I do not miss throwing small squares). This year in alfalfa fields, growming along the edges and in the low lying areas, I have noticed quite a bit of yellow flowers.

This weed is Yellow Rocket (Barbarea vulgaris). A winter annual or biennial with shiny green foliage and bright yellow flowers that may reach as much as 3 feet in height.  Primarily found growing in winter small grains, forages, and pastures. 

The preference of Yellow Rocket is full sun, moist conditions, and a fertile loam or clay-loam soil. Growth is less robust at drier sites with poor soil. A little shade is also tolerated. Most vegetative growth occurs during the cool weather of early to mid-spring.

Yellow Rocket is Also Known As...

 
If you have yellow rocket it’s because your management practices have made a great environment for it. Once we know what kind of conditions it likes we can take steps to select against it.

According to Weeds and Why They Grow, Yellow Rocket (Winter Cress) likes soils very low calcium, low in phosphate, high in potash, very high in magnesium. It likes soils low in humus, soils that are anaerobic, and moist.

To reduce the vigor and eliminate Yellow Rocket in alfalfa, cut the amount of potash applied and increase the amount of SuperCal SO4. Based on the type of environment that Yellow Rocket likes this makes a lot of sense.

Muraite of potash reduces humus, calcium and soil porosity, making it less aerobic and water logged. This makes for a perfect environment for Yellow Rocket. SuperCal SO4 increases soil calcium, porosity, and sulfur levels, exactly what alfalfa needs.

Did we mention that SuperCal SO4 cost a fraction of potash? That SuperCal SO4 increases feed value of alfalfa?

What are you waiting for the countdown is on to growing high quality alfalfa, now if the perfect time to apply SuperCal SO4 and launch yellow rocket out of your fields!

Scientists at the USDA-ARS in Orono, Maine have discovered that dairy cows producing USDA-certified organic milk also produce different manure than cows fed in a commerical operation.  The results showed that conventional and organic dairy manures from commercial dairy farms differed in concentrations of plant nutrients, including phosphorus, metals and minerals.

"The researchers found that the two types of manure had at least 17 different chemical forms of phosphorus that varied in concentrations. The organic dairy manure had higher levels of phosphorus, calcium, potassium, manganese, zinc and magnesium.

Organic dairy manure also contained more types of phosphorus found in association with calcium and magnesium. Such forms are comparatively slow to dissolve and would thus gradually release the nutrients. Slow-release fertilizers generally increase the likelihood that they eventually will be taken up by crops, rather than being washed out of fields into nearby surface or groundwater sources.

Because of this, slow-release fertilizers often can be applied at comparatively low rates. Manure produced by cows in organic production systems may show similar characteristics compared to manure from conventional systems."

 Read more here-http://www.ars.usda.gov/IS/pr/2009/090422.htm

In a couple of past blog's http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/im-not-a-farmer-but-i-play-one-on-tv.cfm  http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/calcium-products-reading-list.cfm I mentioned I was reading The Albrect Papers.

I am happy to say I am finished. It's not that it is a bad book, it has tons of useful information in it. It just really reads like a technical journal article. I really do not enjoy reading journal articles.

By short comings aside, one of the more interesting aspects of this book are the experiments that Dr. Albrect did over 50 years ago. Many of his finding are now just being rediscovered.

Dr. Albrect had an experiment that showed what animals eat makes a very big difference in the quality of manure for fertilizer. Just today Glen Howell highlighted an experiment http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/differences-in-organic-manure.cfm that USDA-ARS conducted showing that is also the case.

Reading the Albrecht papers was very forward thinking for its time. I felt like I was reading the future written 50 years ago. If you want to unlock the secrets of soil fertility and know what soil prinicples will finally be validated in the near future, pick up a copy of Soil Fertility and Animal Heath, by William A. Albrecht.

A great 3 min video I found posted on Farming Secrets Blog discussing soils and weeds and how to find out what conditions are making weeds a problem.

Wonder why you need 1 lb on Nitrogen per bushel of corn and your neighbor needs 0.5 lbs per bushel?

From Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090511122416.htm 

"Contrary to the prevailing view, cereal crops derive the majority of their nitrogen from the soil, not fertilizer. Soils differ considerably in microbial activities that determine nitrogen-supplying power, and these differences must be taken into account if nitrogen fertilizers are to be used efficiently. "

Having proper pH and high levels of available calcium are two of the basic steps to increasing the biological activity of your soil.

Have questions about increasing biological activity, give us a call we can help you increase nutrient availability!

800-255-8196

A farmer recently asked me about the use of elemental sulfur (i.e. Sulfur 90) for crop nutrition. I answered the question with a question of my own-Why were they considering using that product?

Their answer included less cost (questionable) and higher concentration of sulfur (true), along with better agronomic benefits (what???). There was a definite opportunity to provide basic agronomic education, regarding a) what can plants utilize, b) what else is present in the material and do we need it, and c) what other effects does the material have.

Sulfur is taken up by plants only in the sulfate (SO4) form, through the roots. Elemental sulfur must be oxidized in the soil to SO4 before it can be taken up by the plant. The time it takes for this conversion depends on the weather, the soil, and the product used. A great reference is found on the Back To Basics website, www.back-to-basics.net/agrifacts/pdf/b2b29a.pdf and www.back-to-basics.net/agrifacts/pdf/b2b29b.pdf. These 2 articles talk about the differences between sulfate and elemental forms, along with the conditions necessary for the conversion to sulfate.

Elemental sulfur has a place in crop production. It also has some drawbacks including being a very acidic product, and taking a long time before it is plant available.

If you need a plant available sulfur source, you need the sulfate form (calcium sulfate, potassium sulfate, ammonium sulfate). Make sure you understand all of the details about elemental sulfur, before making it part of your crop nutrition program.

This week there was a sad article on the sudden death of the Venezuelan polo horses. It's still not clear what has killed the horses. My opinion is that they were poisoned, though we will find out in a few days for sure.

This article reminds me of a book I had read, Bread From Stones. In the book they talk about how a Calvary group had a number of their horses mysteriously die. They found out that if they didn't keep the bedding straw clean that the horses could be overcome by ammonia.

The ammonia comes from the animals urine and in realatively low amounts can be fatal to horses. The OSHA guidelines for humans is 15 minutes at 35 ppm. Many of our confinement animal operations are much higher than this for the life of the animals.

At Calcium Products we take the health of animals seriously, but we also do not disregard the needs of the farmer. SuperCal SO4 can help keep ammonia low, bedding material high quality for fertilizer, animals happy, and farmers profitable.

I am in Fayetteville, Arkansas today to meet with Dr. Susan Watkins and her team to see how effective SO4 can be in poultry operations and to see if any of our experimental manure treatments are any better. We'll keep you posted on the results.

In an e-letter I received from AgProffesional.com  there is a good article on alfalfa response to sulfur. Trials conducted by Iowa State are confirming what Calcium Products' customers have always known.

This summer we will be teaming with Dr. Sawyer, and Extension Agronomist Mark Wuebker to continue their sulfur research on corn. http://blog.calciumproducts.com/posts/iowa-state-sulfur-research.cfm

"We are excited at Calcium Products to team with Dr. Sawyer and his staff." stated Larry Moore, President of Calcium Products. "It will be of great importance to Iowa farmers to finally quantify the impact of sulfur on production. I have seen a yield increase from sulfur on the farms I own and for many of our customers, SuperCal SO4 is the last thing they would cut from their fertility programs in tight years."

SuperCal SO4 is high quality natural gypsum finely crushed then pelletized. It contains 17% sulfur and is one the least costly sulfur products on the market today.

Additional Information

Sulfur is a structural component of amino acids, proteins, vitamins and enzymes and is essential to produce chlorophyll. It imparts flavor to many vegetables. Deficiencies show as light green leaves. Sulfur is readily lost by leaching from soils and should be applied with a nutrient formula. Some water supplies may contain Sulfur. For more information of the 20 other important crop nutrients click here.

Past blog post on sulfur and Iowa State

I received by email a copy of Crop Observation and Recommendation Network C.O.R.N Newsletter 2009-09 April 14, 2009- April 21, 2009, published by Ohio State. Here's my response to their effort to disprove pelletized lime.

A) Pelletized Lime, Can I Get Away with Lower Rates? - R. Mullen and K. Diedrick

This question comes up every year - can I put down a lower rate of pelletized lime and achieve the same result as typical ag-lime at a higher rate?  Perhaps, but using a fraction of the recommended rate (say a fourth or a third) will likely not achieve the desired result.  It is not that pelletized lime is a poor lime source.  It is an effective lime source because it is very fine material as well as easy to handle and apply using broadcast fertilizer spreaders; however, it simply cannot neutralize soil acidity any better (or faster) than conventional ag lime materials. SuperCal 98G pelletized lime does change the pH of soils faster and more effectively than ag lime. In trials we have seen adjustments to the soil in as little a 2 weeks. Last year when applying 98G to a grid sampled field we changed the pH 1 point (not 0.1 but 1.0 whole point) in one growing season. This customer's father applied 2 tons of lime to his farms and there was no pH adjustment a year later.  Ohio uses a term - effective neutralizing power (ENP) - to compare the strength of different liming materials.  The ENP of a given liming material is a function of three things - total neutralizing power (TNP-depends upon purity of the source and the ratio of calcium to magnesium), fineness (size of the particles), and moisture content. ENP does not give more value for a finer grind of lime. Since lime is not very soluble the finer its ground the more effective it is. ENP gives 100% credit for 60 mesh lime. Because 100 mesh has a surface area almost twice that of 60 mesh it should get a rating of 200% on the ENP scale. Most ag lime averages 25 mesh which makes it 5 times coarser than SuperCal 98G and 1/5 as effective. Lime recommendations can be found in an OSU Extension Factsheet titled "Soil Acidity and Liming for Agronomic Production"
(<http://agcrops.osu.edu/fertility/documents/AGF505.pdf%3Ehttp://agcrops.osu.e
du/fertility/documents/AGF505.pdf).

Pelletized lime is typically finer than ag-lime, so its ENP value may be higher.  Higher ENP means that it will take fewer pounds of pelletized lime than ag lime to neutralize the same amount of soil acidity.  If the soil test lime recommendation for a field is 3 tons per acre, and you have pelletized lime with an ENP of 2000 (which is what most pelletized materials
approach) you would need 3 tons of pelletized lime per acre to achieve the desired neutralization.  Let's consider that same 3 ton recommendation for ag-lime with an ENP of 1000.  It would require 6 tons of ag-lime to achieve the desired change in soil pH.  Though it is more effective on a pound-per-pound basis than ag lime, applying 300 to 500 lb of pelletized lime per acre would not result in the desired change in soil pH because the required amount is 3 tons per acre.  Just because you needed twice as much ag-lime as pelletized lime does not necessarily make pelletized lime the best choice based on cost, especially when pelletized lime can cost 5-7 times more per ton than ag lime. With SuperCal 98G you can use 1/5 of the ag lime rate, this is because it is very pure and five times finer than most ag lime.  Price comparison using ENP is the best way to evaluate liming materials (unless a soil has a low magnesium level in which case you should utilize dolomitic lime).  Select the product that will give you the desired results for the best price.

Another question we get: "is the use of lime in a starter band useful?"  First of all we must realize one thing about lime - we are not supplying a nutrient like a typical fertilizer,
Whoa, whoa, whoa, since when was calcium not a nutrient? Calcium is essential for germination, root growth and helps the plant with uptake of all other nutrients.  we are amending the soil with an additive.  The reason for banding nutrients is to improve their positional availability and/or to decrease soil interactions that affect plant availability. Banding a highly available lime like SuperCal 98G will make nutrients more available in the root zone as well as reduce interactions of aluminum which tie up phosphates. This is not a benefit to a lime addition, in fact, it would be a detriment because you will not be altering soil pH, In almost every case there is no detriment to applying small amounts of lime. but are incurring a considerable cost. The cost of banding SuperCal 98G is usually under $5 per acre and in our customer's testing results in 3-10 bushels per acre return.  Lime is quite insoluble and that is why we recommend lime to be incorporated with soil by tillage whenever possible. The smaller particle size of SuperCal 98G makes it more available to solubilize, become available to plants and soil biology. This increases the volume of soil that will react with the lime and achieve the desired neutralization.  Applying lime in a band will only neutralize a small volume of soil, and will not achieve the desired results of raising soil pH. Yes it will not change a large volume of soil, but for a farmer on a limited budget or rented ground he is only farming for a year it can be a money maker.

An additional note: urea and liming compounds do not mix when surface-applied; substantial nitrogen losses can occur when urea is deposited on a high pH area.  Also, remember that gypsum (calcium sulfate) does not have the capacity to change soil pH, and thus is not a liming compound. Urea and calcium sulfate can be a very good mix when applied together. SuperCal SO4 is a pelletized calcium sulfate and stops ammonia volatilization by converting Nh3 to stable ammonium sulfate and calcium hydroxide, a naturally occurring liming agent. Though its liming ability is offset by the ammonium sulfate.

------------

SuperCal 98G building soils, faster, better, more profitably.

A recent article in No-Till Farmer Magazine spotlights a farming operation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Eugene and Curtis Lapp have been applying SuperCal 98G with their insecticide boxes at planting at 100 lbs per acre.

They have found it to be more economical and more effective than broadcasting.

Congratulations on the article guys, and thanks for the business!

Read the article "What I've learned from No-Tilling" 

Some companies make things that produce hazardous by products. They usually have to pay a huge fee to properly dispose of it. This could mean dumping in a land fill or processing it to reduce the heavy metals, salts, or other toxicities.

By applying it for "free" on your field, it saves them thousands of dollars per ton, and gets rid of the hazardous material. Be suspicoius of free product, have your own complete analysis run on the product by a reputable lab. Avoid anything with heavy metals or aluminum in it, as this will cause nutrient tie-ups and imbalances.

In addition to receiving "free" product you also get too much of it and spread poorly.

For maximum yield you want a proper spread pattern. It does you no good to have a large amount of product right behind the spreader.

In our experience "free" products can show advantages the first year, then as nutrient imbalances develop, yields can crash. This leads to a more expensive treatment of the soil to correct the imbalances caused by over applying free/waste products.

When it comes to high pH there are no easy fixes. Understanding why you have high pH is the first step to increasing production.

Soil pH is the measure of potential Hydrogen. It is simply a measure of how much hydrogen is in the soil and tells you nothing else. It has nothing to do with whether you have high or low levels of cationic nutrients.

In high pH we are measuring the OH ion. That ion can be tied to a limitless number of other ions, such as nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, sodium, or calcium to name a few.

Here is a quick rundown of soil compounds that cause high pH.

The Carbonate (CO₃) molecule can also be a source of high pH soil. Carbonates can occur in high pH soils that have low oxygen and high carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels. Water (H₂O and CO₃ interact to from OH ions and CO₂. In aqueous solution, carbonate, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide, and carbonic acid exist together in a dynamic equilibrium. In strongly basic conditions, the carbonate ion predominates.

Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) – Is an extremely strong base. KOH becomes tacky in air because KOH is hygroscopic.  KOH generally contains varying amounts of water as well as carbonates. Adding potassium chloride (muriate of potash) to wet soil increases soil KOH, making soil higher in pH. If potassium is needed in high pH soils it is best to use a potassium sulfate. To reduce soil KOH use a fertilizers that create sulfuric acid.

Potassium Carbonate (K2CO₃) - Is a white salt, soluble in water which forms a strongly alkaline solution. It is hygroscopic. Soils high in KOH and have poor aeration can lead to increased amounts of Potassium Carbonate It is a main component of soap, and is correlated with reduced biological activity. Keeping soil oxygen levels up and avoiding KCl fertilizer applications will reduce potassium carbonate build up.

Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) - Also known as lye, is a common component of drain cleaners. Sodium hydroxide forms a strong alkaline solution when dissolved in a solvent such as water. It is hygroscopic and readily absorbs carbon dioxide from the air further increasing soil pH. A sodium hydroxide solution will leave a yellow stain on fabric and paper.

Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃) - Is formed by combining sodium hydroxide and carbon dioxide. Aqueous solutions are mildly alkaline: Sodium bicarbonate may also be used as an anti-fungal. It has disinfectant and antiseptic properties. Keeping soil oxygen levels up, limiting raw manure applications, and using sulfate containing fertilizers will help to reduce sodium soil levels.

Magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)₂ ) – Is best known for low solubility, and is considered a strong base. Magnesium hydroxide interferes with the absorption of folic acid and iron, necessary crop nutrients.

Magnesium Carbonate (MgCO₃) – Is formed by combining Mg(OH)₂ and CO₂. It is practically insoluble in water and ammonia. All forms of magnesium carbonate react in acids. Due to its insolubility, high magnesium soils often have magnesium deficient crops growing on them. MgCO₃ is a potent liming agent, but should be used with caution to avoid build up of magnesium in soils. MgCO₃ is hygroscopic and can cause soils to stay wet and sticky.

Calcium Hydroxide (Ca(OH)₂) is formed in soils by that have calcium chloride (by product of KCl) and an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide present. In some cases calcium hydroxide can be a flocculent, though it is also an ingredient in mortar, and plaster. It does not solubalize in water, and therefore cannot be available to plants. Calcium hydroxide is an ingredient in long lasting fungicide mixes and has a strong anti-microbial effect.

Calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) — The main ingredient of SuperCal 98G and limestone. It will react with water that is saturated with carbon dioxide to form calcium bicarbonate. CaCO3 reduces the effects of chlorine gases that can be released from potassium chloride fertilizers. Having high amounts of calcium present on a soils test is no indication that it is available to crops. In solution at normal atmospheric conditions the availability of calcium decreased dramatically with increasing pH.

      
Decreasing the pH from 8 to 7 increases the maximum Ca2+ concentration by a factor 100. This is why at high pH you can have lots of calcium in your soil but it is not available to your crops.

Many chloride and hydroxide salts (MgCO3, NaOH, K2CO3, and KOH) are hygroscopic. This means that they attract water from the atmosphere making them sticky. Calcium Sulfate (SuperCal SO4) is a natural drying agent for these soils. SuperCal SO4 adds sulfate that can work to reduce OH ions, leach sodium and magnesium.

Since high pH soil are wetter and have less natural oxygen, anaerobic bacteria, fungus, and molds (fusarium, rhizoctonia, and pythium) can abound. Further complicating the problem is that the OH ions can act on beneficial oxygen loving bacteria (Mycorrhizae azotobacter rhizobia) killing them off and reducing yield.

Eliminating KCL application from high pH soils is one of the first steps to reducing pH. Using fertilizer sources high is sulfate (K₂SO₄, (NH₄)₂SO₄ and CaSO₄) is the next step.

No, there are no easy fixes when it comes to high pH, continuing to do what you have always done will definitely not help you increase yields.

So your dealer has told you that your local quarry has shut down and your dealer cannot get your lime applied.

Now what?!?

If you need lime, there is no substitute. The University of Wisconsin says that if you need lime you should see a 20%-40% increase in yields.

But my P and K numbers are low? If I can't get lime shouldn't I at least apply P & K.

No, if you pH is below 6.0, 25%-50% of N, P and K are unavailable to you crop. Only liming will make these nutrients available to your crop.

Applying fertilizer to soil that has low pH is like trying to bail out a boat before you fix the hole in it. Fertilizer is the main cause of acidity.

In test conducted by one of our customers, applying 600 lbs of SuperCal 98G to a soil pH of 5.1 increased the K by 23% and  P 8% in the soil. No other P or K was applied. The pH was increased to 5.7, while this is a big increase there is still work to be done on this field. Application of another 600-1000 lbs will bring this field into optimal range.

Don't let the quarry cost you money in lost yields and higher fertilizer bills. Apply SuperCal 98G up to planting to increase yields and make soil nutrients available to plants this year.

Every year you wait to apply lime could cost you $200 or more per acre in lost opportunity. Ask your dealer to apply SuperCal 98G today or find one that will on our dealer locator.

I like to read some of the different postings on various discussion boards regarding agriculture.  One of my favorite sites recently referred to an article that I found quite interesting.  Here is the link:

http://www.lesspub.com/cgi-bin/site.pl?332&ceNews_newsID=6043

This article discusses the role that calcium, when bound to a protein, has by prompting plants to make salicylic acid when it is threatened by infection or other danger.  Salicylic acid (SA), let’s see, it has been a while since chemistry class.  Oh yeah, it is related chemically to aspirin!  According to the director of the study, B.W. Poovaiah, it has been known that plants make SA for quite a while (> than 100 years), but the role of calcium in telling a plant to make SA has been unknown up to now.

Wow!  This is good stuff!  I mean one of the biggest reasons that I chose agronomy over animal science was a remark that I remember from freshmen orientation.  Animals give very specific, unmistakable indications when they are not feeling well or under stress.  Plants, well let’s just say that they are often more subtle about it.  But this article helps us understand that they too are not passive about putting together a defense plan to ward off infection.

The downside?  Plants that have high levels of SA will be very resistant to infection, but have slower growth.  Plants with too little SA will grow very rapidly, but are susceptible to infection.  Makes sense, many things in life & nature follow the rule that some is good but too much or too little causes problems.
 
Another great reason to make sure that you don’t neglect calcium nutrition when finalizing your crop plans for 2009.  SuperCal 98G & SO4 are both great sources of calcium, that’s why they are called Super!  Why not try some today & give your crop a head start (but not a headache).

From Iowa State Crop Notes for March 4 2009

Mark Wuebker will be conducting similar trials in the Des Moines/Ankeny area. Anyone interested in participating in these strip trials should contact Mark or Brian.

Mark Wuebker
ISU Extension Agronomist
1625 ADVENTURELAND DR STE A, ALTOONA, IA 50009-2249
Phone: (515) 957-5778
Fax: (515) 967-6164
Email: mwuebker@iastate.edu

Calcium Products will be assisting Iowa State in this research.

Just saw this article from Ag Proffesional:

Phytophthora root rot is a disease commonly a associated with low avialable soil calcium and low soil oxygen. See our previous article on root rot. Increasing the calcium increase root growth and vigor. Adding calcium to the soil will also increase oxygen to the soil helping to slow the pathogen.

Even if you have high pH you may be short on calcium. Hydrogen is the only thing that pH measures and has nothing to do with calcium availablity. SuperCal SO4 increases soil calcium and doesn't rasie pH.

SuperCal SO4 is an excellent way to inexpensivly reduce root rots. As an added benift you'll see a reduction in white mold too.

Think your getting a good deal from free product?

Think there might be a reason someone would pay you to use a product?

Wonder what else you get for "free" in power plant gypsum (coal ash, fly ash)?

This is a great article discussing the problems with power plant gypsum.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-in-soil

SuperCal SO4 95% pure, has no Arsenic, and is currently under organic review.

Last year a did a blog on A Pictorial of High Quality Soil. I talked with the farmer soon after that and set up a trial.

We added 400 lbs of SuperCal 98G in one strip. The farmer has a yield monitor and we weighed the strip. It was 20 bushels better than the field average. This was on soybeans.

When looking at the soil analysis it is not hard to predict such a response.

When half of the cationic nutrients are hydrogen, which isn't used for growth, it's no suprise that you would have a dramatic yield increase.

When  I spoke to the farmer recently asking if he was liming this the rest of the field he astutly said "Yes, liming doen't cost, it pays!"

This summer I posted a blog stating that I would post a list of the books I had intended to read this summer. While I am a little late here it is;

Books bought but unread;

• Roots Demystified, Robert Bourik
• Building Soils for Better Crops, Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es
• More Food From Soil Science, The Natural Chemistry of Lime,  V. A. Tiedjens
• From The Soil Up, Donald L. Schriefer

Books bought and worthy of your attention;

How Soils Work, Paul Syltie, PH. D.  This book is a very basic introduction into the workings of the soil. I read about 2/3rds of it the first time I picked it up. It’s a quick read and much of this is a refresher for me. This is a great book for anyone who has not taken a university soils course

Weeds and Why They Grow, review here

Soil Fertility & Animal Health by William A. Albrecht, Ph.D.  , I have read a few chapters of this book. I have been told by many well known consultants that this is “the” book to read on soils. However, Dr. Albrecht was a great scientist and as such his papers read like a science journal. You have to want to read this one, and be ready for some work. While I have to force myself to pick up this book and read a chapter from time to time, I always pick up extremely useful information.

Last night I started Bread From Stones, by Julius Hensel.  This book was originally written in 1893 in German, and has since been translated to English. It is a quick read, though a little tough as grammar and names for elements are a little different today than over 100 years ago.

Hensel goes into detail the dangers of over applying nitrogen to fields, the dangers of ammonia to animals and how to raise high quality meat, dairy and eggs, and backs it up with chemistry that still holds truth today, even if we’ve forgotten that basic chemistry principles.
The benefits of fine ground stones where known as far back as Roman times, and Hensel expands “ …every little particle may be rendered accessible to the water and the air, and can, therefore be used as plant food. Thence it follows that one single load of the very finest stone-meal will do as much as twenty loads of coarser products, so that by reducing to the finest dust the cost for freight and carriage…would amount to one-twentieth.”

We have known the benefits of finely ground stone dusts (meals) for decades. Many consultants still say it takes tons of lime to change tons of soil, if this were true; wouldn’t it take a tone of MAP to raise your phosphorus levels? The reason it doesn’t is because MAP is fine particles in prills, very reactive in the soil… kind of like SuperCal SO4 and SuperCal 98G!

Last week was the Iowa Power Farming Show in Des Moines, Iowa. It is one of the largest shows in the Midwest. For the second year we sponsored the buses that gave people free rides from the free parking area a number of blocks from the exposition area. We had many great comments of appreciation for sponsoring the free parking and rides.

We also talked to farmers from central Illinois and Michigan that we using our products. They have found that its worth the drive for SuperCal 98G and SuperCal SO4, the highest quality lime and gypsum anywhere.

And this picture caught my eye.

What does rims and calcium chloride have to do with soils and crops? Well Phil Globig with Rim Guard discovered years ago that the calcium chloride used to add ballast to tires is highly corrosive. Phil’s company developed a better product that doesn’t ruin your rims.

So what happens when you apply 0-0-60 (KCl, muriate of potash) to your soil? Ever wonder what the Cl in KCl stands for? It is chloride. When you apply KCl to high pH soil you create calcium chloride. Wonder why that high priced seed corn keeps falling over? It’s tough to grow roots in soil that can rust tire rims.

Beside the fact that you’re making “free”, or at least very cheap Ammonium sulfate fertilizer, treating your manure with SuperCal SO4 makes it cheaper to heat your buildings.
This is due to a simple rule of chemistry called Specific Heat.

Specific Heat is the measure of the heat energy required to increase the temperature of a unit quantity of a substance by a certain temperature interval. In simple terms it is how much propane does it take to raise the temperature in your barn 1 degree.

When you use SuperCal SO4 to stabilize ammonia in the manure, it is not released to the atmosphere of the barn. The specific heat of ammonia gas is 1.55. Water’s specific heat is 1. Normal atmosphere is comprised of mainly Nitrogen (78%) and Oxygen (21%). The specific heat of Nitrogen gas is 0.777 and Oxygen is 1.33. Their combined specific heat is 0.885.

It takes 1.75 times more energy to heat ammonia as it does air! WOW!

Normal air has 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 0.9% Argon, 0.03% Carbon Dioxide and the last 0.7% is comprised of 13 other elements. In poultry barns ammonia can quickly become the 5th or 6th most abundant element, when it should be the lest abundant. Ammonia levels can get as high as 220 ppm but generally range from 7 to 177 ppm

Simply put if it would take 88.5 gallons of propane to heat a barn with normal air content and it would take 155 gallons to heat a barn that is 125ppm ammonia. In barns that have high ammonia there is the added cost of running exhaust fans, and the cost of heating air only to have it sucked out.

You thought fertilizer was expensive!

There are also other costs of high ammonia:

During winter, when ventilation rates are low, the ammonia concentrations in many houses will exceed the levels recommended by industry groups of maximum 50 ppm at bird level. However Anderson et al. (1964) showed that ammonia levels as low as 20 ppm compromised the immune system of chickens, making them more susceptible to diseases and damaged the respiratory system of the birds.

Treating your manure with SuperCal SO4 will result in higher rates of gain and lower death loss.

Ammonia emission of more than 100 lb of ammonia per day per site triggers federal reporting requirements through the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). According to Iowa State you could be emitting 1.5 lbs to 11.66 lbs per hour of ammonia.

Treating your manure with SuperCal SO4 will keep the government and paper work out of your life.

The U. S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set a 15-minute exposure limit for gaseous ammonia of 35 ppm by volume in the environmental air and an 8-hour exposure limit of 25 ppm by volume. Exposure to very high concentrations of gaseous ammonia can result in lung damage and death.

So for about $0.12 per 100 birds you can make your own Ammonium Sulfate fertilizer, reduce the cost of heating and ventilating and increase your flock health, make more money and live to enjoy it!

On Monday  I attended a meeting put on by International Ag Labs titled Soybean Summit - Pushing the Yields on Soybeans, in Fairmont, Minnesota.

I number of experienced agronomists spoke on many items. Here are some of the notes I took;

• Drying soil when doing a lab analysis increases sulfur readings
• Greatest soil S loss when K and Na are high
• Stunted plants and uneven crop emergence can be caused by sulfur deficiency
• 2010 should be a bad white mold year for soybeans
• Sencor can worsen white mold
• If your roots are not bright white you do not have enough available calcium
• May take 3 years to improve soils
• P:K ratio of 1:1 for proper growth and to reduce weeds

To Control Insects:

• Control Nitrate levels in the plant
• Keep plant Sugar high
• Keep available calcium high
• Use the right form of phosphate for your soil

For Higher Yields on Beans

1. Break Compaction
2. Get oxygen into the soil
3. Lime or Gypsum and apply manure
4. Meet early needs of the plant
5. Identify diseases and insect problems
6. Foliar Feed

And what you been waiting for my notes from Kip's talk (In my words)

• Crops should ripen with a green stalk, if not your not fertilizing properly
• Accurate planting is key, drills do not do this
• All seed emerging within 48 hour of the first plant
• 2" tall weeds remove 10% of yield that cannot be recovered

There was much more discussed but my key take-away was fertilize properly first, get your soil balanced and working then move on to other things. This was a great meeting for any farmer looking to improve yields. I highly suggest trying to make it to one of International Ag labs next meetings.

If you need to lime your fields why would you choose a product that takes 7 years to pay you back? Times of uncertainty and poor prices call for better efficiency, quicker return on your investment and a sharper pencil. SuperCal 98G is fertilizer grade lime.

Ag lime is at best a 50% effective liming agent. That is on its best day, but what about the drift on application day and uneven spreading? What about the drift after application? What about the water that's in the ag lime when you bought it? How much water did you buy? What about the big boulders that show up in you lime load? In the field you might get 25% effectiveness from a ton of ag lime.

Lime Drifting off the field	Lime applied in small piles around the field

SuperCal 98G is proven to increase yield when applied with potash when lime is needed. Having the proper pH makes phosphorus more available. Having enough calcium in the soil increases root mass and improves plant health.

You're going to spend $5-10 per year on lime anyway, why would you wait until you have a problem to add lime? Maintain proper pH like you maintain proper P and K levels and make more money this year, not 7 years from now.

SuperCal 98G is a fertilizer grade lime, it is 98% pure calcium carbonate, ground extremely fine to make it a 91% effective liming agent. It is pelletized to standard fertilizer grade prills, making blending with all dry fertilizer easy. It's effectiveness means you get results in this cropping year.

We just can't tell you all the great benefits of gypsum, so we get really excited when someone else presents information on gypsum.

One person who has done some great research is L. Darrell Norton of the National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory.

Darrell conducted a two-year demonstrating successful results in reducing runoff volumes in agricultural applications. Addition of Gypsum to the soil not only improved infiltration, but also reduced run-off concentrations of Phosphorous and Atrazine. The study concluded that use of the gypsum amendment during application of fertilizer and herbicide treatments is a practical management approach in making agriculture more sustainable with respect to surface water quality. The findings were presented at the 9th Biennial Conference on Stormwater Research and Watershed Management.

In the January 2009 edition of the CSA News, The USDA-ARS in Kentucky and Arkansas are researching how Alum affects Ammonia Producing Micro-organisms in poultry litter.

They found that Alum reduced the bacterial population by 50% and a 3x increase in the fungal population. While the bacteria reductions lower the ammonia volatilization loss, the increase in fungus increases the N mineralization.

The story reports that this study will help researchers develop better litter amendments. View the report at http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/37/6/2360

Ok, so what is Alum and what are the other choices in treating litter?

Alum is caustic, makes soil acidic, reduces the ability of crops to grow once spread on your fields, and is expensive.

Another choice for treating poultry litter is PLT. In addition to being astronomically expensive, anyone who willingly applies PLT treated litter to their fields is going to experience massive increases in sodium levels (a much bigger concern than ammonia).

While research is good, there is currently a product on the market that will treat ammonia for pennies, is easy to handle, doesn't cause soil problems, and is safe and natural.

We introduced SuperCal SO4 for treating manure in past blogs, The Smell of Money and Treating Manure with SuperCal SO4, here is what really happens when using different products to treat manure.

Warning - Significant amounts of chemistry below!

Alum

Also known as hydrated aluminum potassium sulfate, and Aluminum Sulfate

Carries an OSHA safety warning of Hazardous

Cost $70 for a 50# bag

How it works
10 NH₃ + 10 KAl(SO₄)2 + 12 H₂0 = 10 NH₄(SO₄)2 + 10 KOH + 10 Al 

Ammonia - NH₃ is produced in animal manure by the breakdown of urea and in poultry manure by the breakdown of uric acid. The gaseous emission of NH₃ can be inhibited if converted to ammonium - NH₄. Alum - KAl(SO₄)2, is an acid that produces hydrogen ions - H when it dissolves. The hydrogen ions produced by this reaction will attach to ammonia to form ammonium, which further reacts with sulfate ions to form ammonium sulfate - NH₄(SO₄)2
Ammonium sulfate - NH₄(SO₄)2, is an inorganic chemical compound commonly used as a fertilizer. It contains 21% nitrogen as ammonium ions and 24% sulfur as sulfate ions. In the soil the sulfate ion is released and forms bisulfate, lowering the pH balance of the soil while contributing essential nitrogen for plant growth.

Potassium Hydroxide - KOH, also known as Caustic Potash is also produced. KOH is used in cleaning and disinfection.

Aluminum - Al, the final component of the reaction is a precipitation of aluminum.

Not satisfied with you soybean yields.

Take a day to listen to Kip Cullers and other talk about what it takes to grow high yielding soybeans.

International Ag Labs is sponsoring the Soybean Summit - Pushing the Yields on Soybeans, January 19th, 2009 in Fairmont, Minnesota.

You can bet that I will be there!

With all the saturated fields we had this past spring many farmers found large patches of soybean fields dying out. This is known as dampening off or Phytophthora root rot.

Did you know you have options other than replanting… if you start now with fall fertility.

Current recommendations to control root rot are:

• Choosing the right variety
• Improve soil drainage
• Fungicide seed treatments can be used to reduce the early season damping off
• Avoid applying high levels of potash

Many growers will not want to reduce their applied potash for fear of yield loss, fungicides have shown to help, tilling can improve drainage, and the variety that may yield the best under normal conditions may not have resistance to root rot.

What if there was a product that could improve soil drainage, making tile work better, add nutrients to increases soybean yields, and helps with potash uptake? What if you could replace a fertilizer you are already using and it costs less?

Lucky for you there is, its called SuperCal So4 pelletized gypsum. You can use it as your primary sulfur source since it has 17% sulfur in the sulfate form. That means it works right away in any pH. SuperCal SO4 help drainage tile works better, increases yields, and increases nutrient uptake.

While no University is currently doing any research on reducing root rot on soybeans with gypsum, lots are looking at gypsum on other crops. Gypsum has shown to reduce root rot on many other crops.

Root Rot in Avocado
Infection of avocado seedlings by Phytophthora cinnamomi in infested soil was decreased by 71% by the addition of gypsum soil amendments in replicated greenhouse experiments.
 
From: Effects of Gypsum Soil Amendments on Avocado Growth, Soil Drainage, and Resistance to Phytophthora cinnamomi. B. J. Messenger, J. A. Menge, and E. Pond, Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside 92521

Red Stele in Strawberries 
Gypsum applied at 6 tons/acre either in the fall or spring prior to planting strawberries significantly reduced the incidence and severity of red stele (Red stele is caused by the soil borne fungus Phytophthora fragariae) in the spring, one year after planting compared to untreated soil. The severity of red stele remained significantly lower in plots amended with gypsum applied at 6 tons/acre in the spring, compared to untreated plots for up to 2 years after  application.

 From:  Effect of rate and timing of gypsum soil amendments on the incidence and severity of red stele in strawberries  M.J. Celetti,  C. Kessel, P. Fisher, J. DeEl, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Guelph, Ontario; Simcoe, Ontario

Note: Customers of ours have reported better results with 300# of SuperCal SO4 than 3 tons of gypsum sourced on the west coast.

Raspberry -- Root Rot
Cause: Root rot is a major disease complex of raspberry in the Pacific Northwest. Many fungi and fungus-like microorganisms associated with cane fruit root rots are associated with strawberry black root rot. Phytophthora fragariae var. rubi causes a typical wet-soil root rot on some red raspberry cultivars throughout the region.
Cultural Control: Amend soil with gypsum (6 tons/A) before making raised beds and planting.

From: http://plant-disease.ippc.orst.edu/disease.cfm?RecordID=954

Note: Customers of ours have reported better results with 300# of SuperCal SO4 than 3 tons of gypsum sourced on the west coast.

In a world of high priced fertilizers it’s nice that you have alternatives. Not only will SuperCal SO4 cost you less per pound of sulfur than anything on the market, you have the benefits of increased soil drainage, increased nutrient uptake, and reduction in soil borne disease!

SuperCal SO4 a real bargain in a high priced market.

If you have acidic soils there is no better time to lime than this year. With phosphates and potash at all time highs, lime is comparatively cheap. Not to mention that where lime is need you can expect a 10%-40% yield increase, according to the University of Wisconsin. Few crop inputs can boast this type of response.

With commodity prices sliding, farmers have been questioning every input. One that we deal with is, isn't ag lime cheaper and lasts longer than SuperCal 98G?

In many cases for equivalent rates of SuperCal 98G is actually cheaper than ag lime. This is because since 100% of 98G works in the field, you have to haul less to the field. Most ag lime is only 50% effective, but you'll pay the truck freight for the whole ton. Since SuperCal 98G is pelleted it can be spread with other fertilizers reducing application costs. Also you do not lose hundreds of pounds of 98G to drift like with ag lime.

What about longevity of lime? Isn't ag lime the best choice for a landowner? We don't think so, and here's why. The longevity of ag lime is due to how coarse it is. Since most ag lime averages 20-30 mesh, after 4 years is only 45% available. Or to put in another way you spend $40 per acre for 2 tons of lime and don't get a payback for 8 years.

Think of lime like phosphates, you could put 8 years of phosphate out and you technically wouldn't be wasting your money, it becomes available over a number of years. Is that really the most efficient way to apply phosphates? Not only do you tie up a tremendous amount of money, you could be throwing your soil out of balance and making some nutrients unavailable. This is exactly what happens when you only lime every 3-5 years.

There is a much more efficient way to lime, a way the returns money on your investment in the same year. In a test plot I had with a neighbor we applied 400# of SuperCal 98G after the corn was planted and received a 30-bushel gain. That's a return of $150 for $25 investment in the same year.

It seems like the economy is in a tailspin, the Dow is down 2800 points in less than 2 weeks, corn and soybeans are down 30% off their highs. Commodities are dropping which is bringing the cost of fuel down dramatically, and fertilizer is dropping too, though not nearly fast enough.

So what are you going to do with your fertility plan? Cut dramatically due to the drop in commodities? Shoot for maximum yield as always? Cut P and K and wait for the drop in fertilizer? Do you even have a plan?

Yes fertilizer is expensive, yes the commodity market is tanking, but are you going to take a double hit of lower yields and lower prices? While it may not be a yield to build your P and K levels, if they are low (under 15ppm Bray P and 100ppm K at 10 CEC) then it will more than pay to add them in.

What about your pH? Think you can afford to forgo the lime. At a pH of 6 you could be missing out on an additional$200 of income at today's prices , even more if you pH is lower.

The cost of SuperCal 98G has remained relatively unchanged over the past 3 years making it this year's best value. The University of Wisconsin has stated that liming where needed can increase yield 10%-40%.

So even if corn is $3 next year, and you can raise you yield from 150 to 165 a 10% increase and about a 2 to 1 return on investment in the same year when 98G is used (very conservative numbers used). Why spend $50-$100 per acre for tons of aglime and then wait 2-7 years for a return. Apply SuperCal 98G for a fraction of the cost and put grain in the bin in the same season.

WHAT IS PLANT NUTRITION?

Plants use inorganic minerals for nutrition. Complex interactions involving weathering of rock minerals, decaying organic matter, animals, and microbes take place to form inorganic minerals in soil. Roots absorb mineral nutrients as ions in soil water. Many factors influence nutrient uptake for plants. Ions can be readily available to roots or could be "tied up" by other elements or the soil itself. Soil too high in pH (alkaline) or too low (acid) makes minerals unavailable to plants.

FERTILITY OR NUTRITION

The term "fertility" refers to the inherent capacity of a soil to supply nutrients to plants in adequate amounts and in suitable proportions. The term "nutrition" refers to the interrelated steps by which a living organism assimilates food and uses it for growth and replacement of tissue. Previously, plant growth was thought of in terms of soil fertility or how much fertilizer should be added to increase soil levels of mineral elements. Most fertilizers were formulated to account for deficiencies of mineral elements in the soil. The use of soilless mixes and increased research in nutrient cultures and hydroponics as well as advances in plant tissue analysis have led to a broader understanding of plant nutrition. Plant nutrition is a term that takes into account the interrelationships of mineral elements in the soil or soilless solution as well as their role in plant growth. This interrelationship involves a complex balance of mineral elements essential and beneficial for optimum plant growth.

ESSENTIAL VERSUS BENEFICIAL

The term essential mineral element (or mineral nutrient) was proposed by Arnon and Stout (1939). They concluded three criteria must be met for an element to be considered essential. These criteria are: 1. A plant must be unable to complete its life cycle in the absence of the mineral element. 2. The function of the element must not be replaceable by another mineral element. 3. The element must be directly involved in plant metabolism. These criteria are important guidelines for plant nutrition but exclude beneficial mineral elements. Beneficial elements are those that can compensate for toxic effects of other elements or may replace mineral nutrients in some other less specific function such as the maintenance of osmotic pressure. The omission of beneficial nutrients in commercial production could mean that plants are not being grown to their optimum genetic potential but are merely produced at a subsistence level. This discussion of plant nutrition includes both the essential and beneficial mineral elements.

WHAT ARE THE MINERAL ELEMENTS?

There are actually 20 mineral elements necessary or beneficial for plant growth. Carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) are supplied by air and water. The six macronutrients, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulfur (S) are required by plants in large amounts. The rest of the elements are required in trace amounts (micronutrients). Essential trace elements include boron (B), chlorine (Cl), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), sodium (Na), zinc (Zn), molybdenum (Mo), and nickel (Ni). Beneficial mineral elements include silicon (Si) and cobalt (Co). The beneficial elements have not been deemed essential for all plants but may be essential for some.

The distinction between beneficial and essential is often difficult in the case of some trace elements. Cobalt for instance is essential for nitrogen fixation in legumes. Silicon, deposited in cell walls, has been found to improve heat and drought tolerance and increase resistance to insects and fungal infections. Silicon, acting as a beneficial element, can help compensate for toxic levels of manganese, iron, phosphorus and aluminum as well as zinc deficiency. A more holistic approach to plant nutrition would not be limited to nutrients essential to survival but would include mineral elements at levels beneficial for optimum growth.

With developments in analytical chemistry and the ability to eliminate contaminants in nutrient cultures, the list of essential elements may well increase in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF COMPLETE PLANT NUTRITION

The following is a brief guideline of the role of essential and beneficial mineral nutrients that are crucial for growth. Eliminate any one of these elements, and plants will display abnormalities of growth, deficiency symptoms, or may not reproduce normally.

Macronutrients

Nitrogen is a major component of proteins, hormones, chlorophyll, vitamins and enzymes essential for plant life. Nitrogen metabolism is a major factor in stem and leaf growth (vegetative growth). Too much can delay flowering and fruiting. Deficiencies can reduce yields, cause yellowing of the leaves and stunt growth.

Phosphorus is necessary for seed germination, photosynthesis, protein formation and almost all aspects of growth and metabolism in plants. It is essential for flower and fruit formation. Low pH (<4) results in phosphate being chemically locked up in organic soils. Deficiency symptoms are purple stems and leaves; maturity and growth are retarded. Yields of fruit and flowers are poor. Premature drop of fruits and flowers may often occur. Phosphorus must be applied close to the plant's roots in order for the plant to utilize it. Large applications of phosphorus without adequate levels of zinc can cause a zinc deficiency.

Potassium is necessary for formation of sugars, starches, carbohydrates, protein synthesis and cell division in roots and other parts of the plant. It helps to adjust water balance, improves stem rigidity and cold hardiness, enhances flavor and color on fruit and vegetable crops, increases the oil content of fruits and is important for leafy crops. Deficiencies result in low yields, mottled, spotted or curled leaves, scorched or burned look to leaves.

Sulfur is a structural component of amino acids, proteins, vitamins and enzymes and is essential to produce chlorophyll. It imparts flavor to many vegetables. Deficiencies show as light green leaves. Sulfur is readily lost by leaching from soils and should be applied with a nutrient formula. Some water supplies may contain Sulfur.

Magnesium is a critical structural component of the chlorophyll molecule and is necessary for functioning of plant enzymes to produce carbohydrates, sugars and fats. It is used for fruit and nut formation and essential for germination of seeds. Deficient plants appear chlorotic, show yellowing between veins of older leaves; leaves may droop. Magnesium is leached by watering and must be supplied when feeding. It can be applied as a foliar spray to correct deficiencies.

Calcium activates enzymes, is a structural component of cell walls, influences water movement in cells and is necessary for cell growth and division. Some plants must have calcium to take up nitrogen and other minerals. Calcium is easily leached. Calcium, once deposited in plant tissue, is immobile (non-translocatable) so there must be a constant supply for growth. Deficiency causes stunting of new growth in stems, flowers and roots. Symptoms range from distorted new growth to black spots on leaves and fruit. Yellow leaf margins may also appear.

Micronutrients

Iron is necessary for many enzyme functions and as a catalyst for the synthesis of chlorophyll. It is essential for the young growing parts of plants. Deficiencies are pale leaf color of young leaves followed by yellowing of leaves and large veins. Iron is lost by leaching and is held in the lower portions of the soil structure. Under conditions of high pH (alkaline) iron is rendered unavailable to plants. When soils are alkaline, iron may be abundant but unavailable. Applications of an acid nutrient formula containing iron chelates, held in soluble form, should correct the problem.

Manganese is involved in enzyme activity for photosynthesis, respiration, and nitrogen metabolism. Deficiency in young leaves may show a network of green veins on a light green background similar to an iron deficiency. In the advanced stages the light green parts become white, and leaves are shed. Brownish, black, or grayish spots may appear next to the veins. In neutral or alkaline soils plants often show deficiency symptoms. In highly acid soils, manganese may be available to the extent that it results in toxicity.

Boron is necessary for cell wall formation, membrane integrity, calcium uptake and may aid in the translocation of sugars. Boron affects at least 16 functions in plants. These functions include flowering, pollen germination, fruiting, cell division, water relationships and the movement of hormones. Boron must be available throughout the life of the plant. It is not translocated and is easily leached from soils. Deficiencies kill terminal buds leaving a rosette effect on the plant. Leaves are thick, curled and brittle. Fruits, tubers and roots are discolored, cracked and flecked with brown spots.

Zinc is a component of enzymes or a functional cofactor of a large number of enzymes including auxins (plant growth hormones). It is essential to carbohydrate metabolism, protein synthesis and internodal elongation (stem growth). Deficient plants have mottled leaves with irregular chlorotic areas. Zinc deficiency leads to iron deficiency causing similar symptoms. Deficiency occurs on eroded soils and is least available at a pH range of 5.5 - 7.0. Lowering the pH can render zinc more available to the point of toxicity.

Copper is concentrated in roots of plants and plays a part in nitrogen metabolism. It is a component of several enzymes and may be part of the enzyme systems that use carbohydrates and proteins. Deficiencies cause die back of the shoot tips, and terminal leaves develop brown spots. Copper is bound tightly in organic matter and may be deficient in highly organic soils. It is not readily lost from soil but may often be unavailable. Too much copper can cause toxicity.

Molybdenum is a structural component of the enzyme that reduces nitrates to ammonia. Without it, the synthesis of proteins is blocked and plant growth ceases. Root nodule (nitrogen fixing) bacteria also require it. Seeds may not form completely, and nitrogen deficiency may occur if plants are lacking molybdenum. Deficiency signs are pale green leaves with rolled or cupped margins.

Chlorine is involved in osmosis (movement of water or solutes in cells), the ionic balance necessary for plants to take up mineral elements and in photosynthesis. Deficiency symptoms include wilting, stubby roots, chlorosis (yellowing) and bronzing. Odors in some plants may be decreased. Chloride, the ionic form of chlorine used by plants, is usually found in soluble forms and is lost by leaching. Some plants may show signs of toxicity if levels are too high.

Nickel has just recently won the status as an essential trace element for plants according to the Agricultural Research Service Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory in Ithaca, NY. It is required for the enzyme urease to break down urea to liberate the nitrogen into a usable form for plants. Nickel is required for iron absorption. Seeds need nickel in order to germinate. Plants grown without additional nickel will gradually reach a deficient level at about the time they mature and begin reproductive growth. If nickel is deficient plants may fail to produce viable seeds.

Sodium is involved in osmotic (water movement) and ionic balance in plants.

Cobalt is required for nitrogen fixation in legumes and in root nodules of nonlegumes. The demand for cobalt is much higher for nitrogen fixation than for ammonium nutrition. Deficient levels could result in nitrogen deficiency symptoms.

Silicon is found as a component of cell walls. Plants with supplies of soluble silicon produce stronger, tougher cell walls making them a mechanical barrier to piercing and sucking insects. This significantly enhances plant heat and drought tolerance. Foliar sprays of silicon have also shown benefits reducing populations of aphids on field crops. Tests have also found that silicon can be deposited by the plants at the site of infection by fungus to combat the penetration of the cell walls by the attacking fungus. Improved leaf erectness, stem strength and prevention or depression of iron and manganese toxicity have all been noted as effects from silicon. Silicon has not been determined essential for all plants but may be beneficial for many.
 

Source: http://retirees.uwaterloo.ca/~jerry/orchids/nutri.html

At the end of my in my blog titled I am not a farmer, but I play one on TV, I told you I would post I list of books I planned to read this summer. Very shortly after that blog I ordered a number of books. I have only read 3; two were booklets (less than 50 pages).

The third is "Weeds and Why They Grow", by Jay L. McCamon. I finally decided to finish this one when out at Husker Harvest Days 2 weeks ago, some colleagues and I were walking through the corn plots and noticed an abundance of black nightshade. I told my colleagues that that indicated a fertility imbalance. None really took me seriously.

It’s tough for many to accept that weeds grow because of certain soil conditions. Weeds are not the problem; they are the symptoms of problems. The origin of the word “weed” is “weod” meaning “little herb” If herbs are intended for healing, then weeds are also for healing of the soil.

I have personal experience with this. I am conducting a test plot on the field surrounding my house. The main weeds are foxtail, dandelion, and curly dock. The soil samples came back showing low organic matter, and low calcium. Infield observations were hard pan 6-8” little water infiltration, and poor soil structure.

What does Weeds and Why They Grow say, foxtail, dandelion, and curly dock are all weeds that grow in low calcium soils. Foxtail and curly dock like low humus, curly dock also likes hard soils, and foxtail likes poor drainage.

Many weeds act as collectors of minerals. When they die and decay the minerals from the plant are added back to the soil in a form available to plants. The roots systems of many weeds can penetrate deep into the subsoil to loosen it. They also bring up minerals and make it possible for the root systems of less vigorous plants to follow.

Fredrick Clements, an eminent botanist stated, “ Each plant is an indicator”. The purpose of weeds is to correct soil problems. The common dandelion seems to thrive on bringing calcium back to the soil surface to become available as the plant decays. Broad leaf weeds like a soil environment in which the available potash exceeds the available phosphate. If the potash continues to increase relative to the phosphate, a point may be reached where herbicides cannot control the broadleaf weeds.

Calcium is the element that causes the soil particles to move apart for aeration and drainage. Magnesium makes the particles stick together. One soil consultant has determined that is some soils the excess magnesium is held as trimagnesium ortho phosphate, Mg3(PO4)2-22H2O. Notice that the last part of the formula is twenty-two molecules of water. Is it any wonder that soils high in magnesium tend to dry and crack when water is tied up in a compound instead of available to plants? Note two that phosphate is tied to the magnesium.

What about that field at Husker Harvest Days? Well without a soil test it is hard to know for sure but according to “Weeds and Why They Grow”, Black Nightshade likes low calcium, low phosphates, very high potash, very high magnesium, low humus levels, low soil porosity, anaerobic soils, hard sticky soils, and high levels of aluminum.

To find out about other weeds check out this great reference book. As I finish the other 7 books I will comment on the ones that are worthy.

We have been testing our products for almost 20 years. We know they work, we know they are high quality, and we know they will improve your bottom line.

In fact we are so sure that we will “Prove It” to you. Work with one of our qualified dealers, apply SuperCal SO4 or SuperCal 98G, soil and tissue sample, (we’ll pay for them) record the yield at harvest.

For more details, go to http://www.calciumproducts.com/prove-it.cfm

Find out if your dealer sells SuperCal 98G and SuperCal SO4 on our dealer locator.

The price of fertilizer is continuing to climb. With the price of commodities it will be difficult for may to apply less fertilizer fearing a loss of yield. With proper management and knowledge of your soils you may just be able to apply less fertilizer and increase yields. In this memo from Midwest Labs, for customers with higher magnesium and higher CEC soils some options to increase Potassium availability;

Potassium availability, and/or rate of exchange, can be enhanced by one or more of the following:
1. Optimum potassium soil test levels per C.E.C. range and percent magnesium values.
2. K2O fertilizer applied in bands.
    a. Starter
    b. Surface band
    c. Subsurface band
    d. Combination of (a) + (b) or (a) + (c).
3. Improve soil aeration
4. Adequate exchangeable soil calcium.
    a. Calcium increases potassium adsorption into the plant (2).
    b. Use calcitic lime on acid soils excess in magnesium.
    c. Use gypsum where soil pH is greater than 6.4 on soils with excess magnesium.
    d. Calcium additions can help alleviate soil compaction zones and promotes good soil structure

From: SOIL & FERTILIZER MANAGEMENT CONSIDERATIONS FOR SOILS EXCESS IN MAGNESIUM

See more information from Midwest Labs

With corn silage season coming up this is a good time to talk about nitrate poisoning. Typically associated with drought and rain after dry conditions, there are other factors to that can cause high nitrate in forage crops. High rates of N, low or high levels of molybdenum, low sulfur, and low boron, and events that upset normal plant growth like early frosts.

New pastures are known to be high in nitrate, especially the faster they grow, the more toxic they can become. Hybrid ryegrass is one of the most dangerous. If reseeding pastures this fall make sure to add edible clover which normally do not have high nitrate levels.

Nitrate poisoning has been on the rise in the past decade, this could be due to the reluctance of today's generation to lime pastures (molybdenum levels drop with acid soils), increase use of urea on pastures, and less sulfur naturally being applied due to clean air laws.

Nitrate Toxicity is aggravated by:

• Excess N application in the autumn after a dry period of no growth
• Rain and warmth after a no-grow period
• Fast plant growth
• Stressed plants, from drought, hot wind, frost, and hail
• Low sunshine
• Fast eating by underfed, hungry animals
• Low pasture molybdenum - below 0.5 ppm, 1.6 ppm is optimum
• Molybdenum levels above 4 ppm, especially if pasture sulfur is low
• Low sulfur levels, below 0.25 ppm
• Low calcium and phosphorus levels
• Nitrate is highest in the morning, when rotating cattle wait until mid afternoon

While environment can have an impact on nitrate levels, having the proper soil nutrients in the proper levels is great insurance from nitrate poisoning. As a bonus you'll enjoy better pasture performance, and high gains from your animals.

More bad news on the inputs front from Ohio State (see below), fertilizer prices continue to surge.

Wednesday afternoon, CNBC's Fast Money program interviewed Mike Wilson, CEO of Agrium. Mr.Wilson Stated that demand is not falling off, supply will not meet demand for 3-5 years, they are in effect sold out, their inventory is so low they can't produce enough.

Might be time to really think about your fertilization program for next fall. You certainly don't want to short your yield with the price of corn, but does it really make sense to keep putting on high levels of expensive fertilizer (P-K)?

When was the last time you applied lime? When was the last time you soil sampled? Might be worth a couple of dollars an acre in lab costs to find out what you need and what you don't. When is the last time you applied micros like sulfur, boron, or copper?

Now is the time to start planning that fall fertilization. Lime prices are relatively unchanged and is a bargain compared to potash. It will also make any fertilizer you apply work better!

Call us, or one of our dealers, they can help you reduce your fertilizer costs, and still maintain yields, maybe even increase it!

With the Fourth of July coming up, we are heading down to Hebron Nebraska to spend time with family. We are planning on spending a day with my brother and his wife and four kids. One of the things I have planned is to tell them the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk.

You may have heard it, or tell it pretty often. If you plant these “special seeds” all your dreams will come true, herbicide tolerance, insect resistance, disease resistance, better standablity, better roots, all leading to higher yield, and more piece of mind.

Ok so it’s not the popular version you heard as a kid, but sounds pretty similar.

Deep down we all want an easy solution to our problems. It would be really nice to solve all our problems with planting a different variety or brand of seed. We all know this is a fairy tale and can’t possibly come true.

While it is important to plant the proper genetics on your soil, the point to not forget is the soil. If you don’t know your soils pH and fertility levels it will be really had to match the right genetic to it. More over having soil that is properly fertilized will always out perform soil of poor fertility, in conditions of drought and heavy rainfall.

Properly fertilized corn and beans will also have higher sugar content. This is a natural deterrent to insects, as they cannot digest high sugar plants. The sugar ferments and turns to alcohol killing the little buggers. The good news is high sugar corn and beans will make a better feed source for livestock, have a higher test weight, and dry down better with less storage problems.

So when you get done listening to fairy tales thank the seed salesman for the fond memories of childhood, then get out your soil text books and start solving your problems.

Have a great Fourth of July!!

Many enjoyed a long weekend filled with friends, grilling and lots of food. Ever notice how the first bratwursts tastes way better than the fifth?

I might have over done it on brats, burgers, cookies, and ice cream this weekend!
By Monday afternoon the only thing that sounded good was a couple of Rolaids and a nap.

The same thing happens when you over feed your soil. You don’t get near the yield (enjoyment) from the last 50 pounds of nitrogen as the first 50. In fact adding too much nitrogen requires that you add lime to you soil. Liming your soil works like Rolaids in your belly. It reduces the acidity of the soil, so when you add more food (N), you enjoy higher yields.

With the costs of fertilizer inputs, now is the time to look at a program to lime fields that have proper fertility levels. By keeping you pH neutral you can increase plant available N, P, and K 25%-100% versus letting your soil get acid.

Avoid low available fertilizer, poor root growth, and low yields by keeping your pH neutral with SuperCal 98G

"It is an old saying that "any fool can farm," and this was almost the truth when farming consisted chiefly in reducing the fertility of new, rich land secured at practically no cost from a generous Government. But to restore depleted soils to high productive power in economic systems is no fool's job, for it requires mental as well as muscular energy; and no apologies should be expected from those who necessarily make use of technical terms in the discussion of this technical subject, notwithstanding the common foolish advice that farmers should be given a sort of "parrot" instruction in almost baby language instead of established facts and principles in definite and permanent scientific terms. The farmer should be as familiar with the names of the ten essential elements of plant food as he is with the names of his ten nearest neighbors. Safe and permanent systems of soil improvement and preservation may come with intelligence--never with ignorance--on the part of the landowners."

 "The Story of the Soil," by Cyril G. Hopkins, Professor of Soils and Crops, University of Illinois, 1910.

How well do you know the soil? If you're a professional farmer, agronomist, or consultant you should know it very well.

Just as you would expect your doctor to know the human body, or your tractor mechanic to understand electrical and hydraulic principles, you as a farmer, should know the soil.

Not knowing the soil and applying the same fertilizers as your neighbors is like taking the same medication your doctor prescribes your neighbor. Not very wise and potentially detrimental.

Planting is nearing and we'll soon be done with spraying. How will you spend your spare time this summer, watching baseball, or fishing? Will you decide that now is the time to really understand plant nutrition and what happens in the soil that creates your lively hood.

Where to start? Try these links.

http://books.google.com/books
Many free books available to read online

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
A number of free books to read online

I will be posting a list of books I am planning on reading this summer on a future blog.

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

The current cost of fertilizer, corn, and land has many livestock owners wondering how to stay profitable. Unfortunately there are not quick solutions. This article on nutrient cycling in pastures should help. I have condensed it for quicker reading. 

Appropriate pasture management can enhance the nutrient cycle, increase productivity, and reduce costs. Two practical indicators of soil health are the number of earthworms and the percentage of organic matter in the soil.

Paddock design and stocking density can also affect the efficiency of nutrient cycling in a pasture system. Supplementation of natural fertility, based on soil tests, balances the soil's mineral composition, resulting in better plant and animal growth and increased soil health.

When nutrients cycle efficiently in a pasture system, they move through various soil organisms and pasture plants, then through the grazing animals, and back to the soil again as manure and urine.

With good management, nutrients can cycle quickly with minimal losses to air and water. Less fertilizer will be required, and this means increased profitability for the entire farm.

Good-quality soils produce good-quality pastures. Good-quality soils don't erode, since water flows quickly into the ground and is stored there. Good-quality pastures are springy underfoot, with deep green forage that covers the soil and a moderate amount of dead residue under the canopy. They produce nutritious forage with balanced mineral levels. Livestock find these forages palatable and thrive on them.

Producers create this kind of soil through good management. Using smart grazing strategies, testing soils regularly and applying fertilizers, lime, and organic amendments as needed.

Organic matter is critical for storing water and nutrients in the soil. It holds nutrients in plant-available forms that don't easily wash away. It creates an open soil structure into which water, dissolved minerals, and oxygen can move, ready for plants to use. It provides further nutrient storage in the soil and can disable certain plant toxins.

Trees, many broadleaf weeds, and forages such as alfalfa have taproots that go deep into the soil horizon where some grass roots cannot reach. The nutrients from these deeper soil levels are used by the plant, but become available at the soil surface once the tree leaves fall or the weeds die, decompose, and release their nutrients.

The roots constitute at least half the weight of a grass plant. Many native warm-season perennial grasses have root systems that reach six feet or more into the soil horizon. They occupy a huge underground area and form a network that holds the soil in place. Every year 20-50% of this mass, as well as all of the top growth in temperate climates, dies and becomes organic matter.

Grazing Livestock Affect Pasture Nutrient Cycles
Livestock feeding on pasture use a small proportion of the minerals they ingest in forages to build bones, meat, and hide. The rest is excreted in dung and urine. In general, urine contains most of the nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) wastes, and dung contains most of the phosphorus (P) the animals don't use.

Value Of NPK In Manure And Urine

When N and K are present at higher levels in the feed, they are excreted in manure. Phosphorus and some other minerals cycle through animals primarily in manure. It can take from six months to two years for manure to break down and for the phosphorus to cycle back into the plants. The speed of the cycle is affected by various biological agents as well as by mechanical means.

Grazing behavior has a big impact on nutrient distribution. In smaller paddocks, with high stock density, urine and dung are more evenly distributed than in large ones. Livestock are less selective in their grazing habits and space themselves more evenly within the area allotted for a grazing period. They will graze closer to dung piles and exhibit less avoidance of urine spots so that more forage is used for animal production.

In large areas, cattle act as a herd and go to water together. When water is available nearby, however, animals drink individually and return to graze in other areas. If they must travel in a lane to the water, manure will concentrate in these non-productive areas en route.

When there is not enough room at the water tank for all to water at once, those waiting will manure that area, concentrating nutrients where they are less likely to contribute to plant and animal productivity.

Good management helps distribute nutrients that will feed your pastures. Locating water, minerals, shade, and fly-control devices in different parts of the paddock also discourages nutrient concentration. It is even more beneficial if these high-use areas can be relocated for each grazing cycle or placed in areas that would not otherwise attract livestock use.

Supplemental feed, likewise, should be placed either where nutrients are needed or under the fence. The location should vary with each feeding.

Good management determines how effective the water cycle will be in pastures. If rainwater can enter the soil easily, runoff losses are less. Maximum infiltration of rainfall keeps groundwater tables charged up, wells running year round, and drought damage to a minimum.

Soil surface conditions that foster high rainwater intake are abundant ground cover (by living plants and surface litter) and good soil aggregation. The best-aggregated soils are those that have been in well-managed perennial grass. Though aggregation can be maintained under crops, the perennial activity of grass provides both aggregate-forming processes and aggregate-stabilizing humus.

Lime is a particularly important amendment in pasture management. While it has always been considered necessary for adjusting pH, there is growing evidence that the amount of calcium has important consequences for plant production and animal health.

High fertilization coupled with frequent harvesting of hay speeds organic matter decomposition and releases minerals faster than plants growing on the site can absorb them. As a result, nutrients are leached deeper into the soil, out of the reach of plant roots, or they are lost to run off.

The use of some commercial fertilizer is always an option to be exercised when necessary. However, continuing to look for ways to use natural systems to produce nutritious forage and healthy animals, while lessening one's dependence on purchased, non-renewable resources, is worthwhile.

SuperCal 98G is finely ground limestone pelletized for easier handling and mixing with other dry fertilizers.

SuperCal SO4 is finely ground pelletized gypsum, allowing you to fertilize with calcium and not raise pH.

Corn response to sulfur in Iowa is reported to give an increase in yield 82% of the time. Over half the states in the US have reported sulfur deficient soils. The clean air laws and reduced sulfur content of fuels has decreased the amount of sulfur reaching fields… and pastures.

Sulfur is use to build proteins, amino acids and enzymes. Forages grown with adequate sulfur will have a higher protein content and lower nitrate content.

Fertilizing your pasture with SuperCal SO4 has many positive effects on the amount and quality of the grass. This leads to higher intakes, improved gains and higher stocking rates.

Increasing the sulfur content of your forages will result increase meat-, wool- and milk production. The higher production is due increased dry matter, and cellulose digestibility, increased feed intake and improved nitrogen balance.

Dairy cattle performance can be improved as well. Improvements included a higher production of milk solids, milk fat, and milk protein and milk casein. The higher casein content raised cheese yields.

Under conditions of a sulfur deficiency, increased sulfur of beef cattle rations not only improved average daily weight gain, but also decreased feed costs per pound of gain and increased the carcass grading

Don’t let sulfur limit your production, add SuperCal SO4 your fertility program.

Our customers for years have told us that they are growing better corn and beans than ever with our products. Was it the calcium or the sulfur, or something else? For years Iowa State has told us that Iowa soils have enough calcium and sulfur, well calcium anyway. In the newest research they have found corn does respond to applied sulfur, 82% of the time.

Summary from Evaluation of Corn Response to Sulfur Fertilization in Northeast Iowa, John Sawyer
Corn grain yield increase to S fertilization has occurred with high frequency in these studies. Also, the magnitude of yield increase has been large. Across the two years and three studies, 82% of the sites had a statistically significant yield increase to applied S fertilizer. By study, statistically significant across-site yield increases averaged 15, 18, and 38 bu/acre. Analyzed across S rate, the economic optimum S rate was 14 lb S/acre for fine-textured soils and 24 lb S/acre for coarse-textured soils. This research indicates a dramatic change in need for S fertilization in northeast Iowa, and that S application is an economically viable fertilization practice on many soils.

Read the whole article here.

In case you’ve never used sulfur products their price is rising along with other inputs. Many dealers have reported not being able to source enough sulfur. Fortunately since SuperCal SO4 is made in Iowa from a natural mined source, its price has not risen as dramatically as other sulfur products. In fact using SuperCal SO4 in bulk at the universities recommendations will cost you $7.50 to $10.50 per acre, quite a bit cheaper than other products on the market.

While we have been sold out for over a year we have just finished our plant expansion and should be able to meet demand for the coming years. As an added bonus, SuperCal SO4 doesn’t cause soil acidity like ammonium sulfate, thiosulfate, or elemental sulfur does. Though we do sell lime is you want to add more cost to your fertilizer bill!

I was reading an article from the Corn and Soybean Digest entitled “Yield Contest Winner Provides Last-Minute Corn Growing Tips”. I found one sentence particularly interesting, “Everything has to be managed exactly right,” he says. “Fertility is the key, but I experiment all the time to find out what works best for my area.”

The reason it is interesting is because it is the only sentence in the whole article about fertility. I find it extremely curious that every article about NCGA winners talks about what seed type they use, what seed treatment and/or insecticide is used, and the herbicide and fungicides.

In almost every article about NCGA winners you are lucky to find 2 or 3 sentences about the fertility of the farm.

Since the champion growers are planting the same corn, at the same populations, with the same seed treatments herbicides and fungicides as almost every farmer uses, why doesn’t every one grow 250+ bushel corn?

Proper fertility is hard work, results are hard to measure, and it’s not as exciting as “I applied product x and I grew 20 more bushels of corn!” Why do some genetics result in record yields in some fields and the same genetics in your field falls down? Soil quality and fertility might just have something to do with it.

It is a great time to be involved in agriculture. Grain prices are high and many farmers are replacing badly needed infrastructure and equipment. With the record grain prices, record amount of fertilizer are being applied to fields in an attempt to maximize yield. In addition to the agricultures boom, the US dollar continues to devalue, sending oil to record highs. Since the majority of fertilizer manufacturing requires significant amounts of oil, it has (bad pun warning) added fuel to the fire.

A few stats from the USDA

With many farmers feeling relatively good about the economic forecast, making good money, even with record input prices, why change what your doing. Now is the time to try new things, adjust production practices and push yields. Many of the NCGA’s corn growing champions are hitting the 300 bu mark. On many of their acres they have increased the farm average 20-40 bushels in a couple of years. Yes, there expenses did increase, but those expenses generated more income, not more bills. So if you spend $20 per acre to gain 20 bushels, then at $3 per bushel you have a 3x return on each dollar. At $5 corn it is a 5x return.

What are you doing differently? Are you actively seeking products and services to increase the productivity of the biggest income generator on you farm (soil)? Are you doing the same things you were 3 or 4 years ago, spending 40-50% more and not increasing yields. What will you do when the commodity prices drop and inputs stay high?

True story, I went to the doctor with a dime sized bald spot on the back of my head. The doctor told me to quite rubbing the spot. A month latter I had not rubbed/scratched the spot, it had grown to the size of a half dollar. I sought out a specialist, a dermatologist, he diagnosed it as alopecia, gave me some shots, problem solved.

Another true story from a consulting company:

Pelletized lime products have been characterized as short-term, a quick fix, and even snake oil. If improper rates are reccommended and used most any product will have poor results. 

Many professionals that sell products may not fully understand how to use them or recommend them. This is not just a problem in agronomy but in all aspects of life. From the parts man that sends you home with the wrong part, to the doctor that tells you "if it hurts stop doing it".

Certainly if a product is not used as it is intended poor results will follow. Glyphosate is was a great product. Improper use over the years has reduced its effectiveness. Proper use of any agricultural product is the only way to make sure it performs as promised. Making sure you have a consultant qualified to make recommendations is a topic for another day.

Your soil is the foundation for everything that happens on your farm. It is the number one ingredient for high yields. A true farmer thinks of his soil first and works to improve it. If you are just planting seeds, applying a little fertilizer, and harvesting a crop, you are not a farmer, you’re a miner.

Before I get into it, let me say we are not eco-nuts. However you need to understand that proper soil fertility leads to improved yields, healthier crops and livestock, lower input costs, and higher per acre income. Even if lack of moisture is your biggest limiting factor!

What is the cost of not properly maintaining soil quality?

Soil should act as a sponge that holds and gradually release water back to the plant. If it is ponding, running off, or out a drainage tile, it is taking valuable nutrients with it. Having a quality soil that is soft increases infiltration and decreases loss of water and nutrients.

Average cropland erosion removes soil about 10 to a hundred times faster than it forms.

Land degradation and desertification may account for as much as about 30 percent of the world's greenhouse gas releases, according to researcher Rattan Lal of Ohio State University. A quality soil will raise higher yields resulting in more carbon being stored in the soil as organic matter (OM). During the growing season the soil can release CO2 slowly resulting in higher yields and increasing OM. Low quality soils produced lower yields, resulting in decreasing OM, releasing more gasses to the atmosphere.

Currently US farmers are feeding more than 150 people. However at the current world population growth rate they will need to produce more food within the next 50 years than during the last 10,000 years combined! Genetic engineering will help, but if we do not have quality soils left to plant them in, they will not yield their full potential.

The book "The Erosion of Civilization" by David R. Montgomery, sums it up best. farming was the foundation of the great flourishing of Mesopotamia, but it faced two great problems: salinisation from irrigation, and soil erosion. Such erosion was also a problem in Bronze Age and classical Greece. Montgomery quotes Plato on the region around Athens: "The rich, soft soil has all run away leaving the land nothing but skin and bone."

Protect your biggest investment, protect yourself from future government regulation, protect your source of income, take care of your soil first!

For many the cost of fertilizer is the number one topic being discussed.. It doesn't take a genius to know it is going to be more expensive in the future.

This article from Wells Fargo drives the point home.

A couple of key points:

If the rest of the world wants N at today's price, it's not going to go down.

Prices of fertilizer will continue to increase. If you listen to Elwynn Taylor there is a 70% chance that the price of grain will be higher in the future due to drought. With the volatility of the markets and cost of inputs make sure you cover your are at least covering your cost.

The exciting times are just starting, what are you doing to offset increased fertilizer prices?

Now is the time to start thinking about pasture fertilization. For many cattlemen the cost of fertilizers has them looking for alternatives to high priced N, P and S.

We have had a number of customers comment on the results they have witnessed with SuperCal SO4; higher stocking rate, reduced weeds, better cattle gains, and reduced vet bills. One skeptical customer applied SO4 to only one paddock of his rotational grazing pasture. When he moved the cattle off the SO4 applied section, the next day they busted down the fence to get back to that area. Cattle know where to find the best grass!

In grass legume mixtures SuperCal SO4 has many advantages of Ammonium Sulfate (AMS). First is cost, SO4 is almost half the cost of AMS, it doesn't cause acidity like AMS, and doesn't contain nitrogen. Established grass legume mixtures do not need extra nitrogen. If you fertilizer for the legume it will produce more than enough for the grass. If you fertilizer for the grass it will soon over-take and crowd out the legume.

Finally SO4 will increase water infiltration and holding capacity of your soil. By allowing more water to be held in the soil you can increase stocking rates since there will be more grass.

Forages the high priced fertilizers and find out what other cattleman have, SuperCal SO4 the better choice for pastures and forages.

This past Sunday I was the featured guest on Highway 6 - Your Road to the Country, on 98.3 WOW-FM in Des Moines. It's the nations only full hour, live radio show devoted to living in the country. They talk about the issues that impact rural living and bring on guests that can help make living the lifestyle more enjoyable and profitable.

Highway 6 is not really a farm show; it is dedicated to acreage owners. An interesting note from last weeks show, according to the USDA anyone that files a schedule F with more than $1000 in income is a farmer. That would certainly include anyone that has a few acres and sells some hay to a neighbor, rents some pasture, or sells fruits and vegetables at the local farmers market.

So what was the point of us being on the program? We discussed the importance of liming in any fertility program, how having the proper soil pH can reduce the amount of fertilizer needed, and how using SuperCal SO4 can reduce runoff.

Thanks to the crew over at WOW and to the host Michael Libbie, I had a lot of fun and look forward to being a part of the show in the future.

This winter has been colder than many. The cost of natural gas and propane has been more expensive. The news has been full of stories of people not able to afford the rising cost of heating their homes. What about the folks that have large barns of animals? Not only are they feeling the heating crunch the cost of feed continues to increase. We have a solution to both problems.

Using SuperCal SO4 as a poultry litter treatment. SuperCal SO4 keeps the ammonia gas in manure from volatilizing. This means that there is less venting of buildings, keeping valuable warm air inside. Since ammonia’s molecular weight is less than normal atmosphere it takes less BTU’s to heat a building. Performance of birds will also be enhanced since they will not be breathing ammonia.

While reduction in building odor, decreased heating costs, and increased animal performance are great reasons for using a litter treatment, SuperCal SO4 will increase the value of the litter as a fertilizer. Since SuperCal SO4 keeps the nitrogen from volatilizing it is available to the plants in the field, resulting in higher yields and less high priced chemical fertilizer.

Application Rates for Poultry: 3-5 lbs per 100 birds per week for layers, 2-5# per 100 birds per week for broilers.

It is best to do applications every 10 days, but you can spread all of it when you put down new bedding. Example: 1000 birds for 8 weeks 3 pound rate, 1000/100=10x 8 weeks x 3 = 240 pounds.

Dairy: Up to 2-3# per head per week in dry stalls

Beef Feed Lots: 1-2# per head per week for animals ranging from 600-1000#

Swine: ½ to 2# per head per week for fattening barns and brood sows

These materials can be spread by hand, with a yard sized fertilizer spreader, an ATV spreader, or full size fertilizer buggy. For dry barns a seed pro-box on a stand works great as a holding/storage container. Just fill a five gallon bucket from the slide and spread a scoop full in each stall.

Does not contain sodium, or alum, both of which are toxic to plants!

If you missed it Dan Davidson with DNT blogged about gypsum last week. Dan reports that a study from the USDA ARS that gypsum can indeed curb run off.Check out the research here.

While gypsum does not solve all problems and can’t work create miracles, many will find that it is useful in their fertility program.

Click here to see if you should expect a response to gypsum.

Also a couple of weeks ago in the Iowa Farmer Today, there was an article by Catherine Kling, professor of Environmental Research Economics, the gist of the article was that there needs to be more government subsidizing of conservation practices to solve all the run off in Iowa. I wrote Ms. Kling suggesting that for lees than their budget we could treat every acre in Iowa with SuperCal SO4. There has been a wealth of research in addition to that by the ARS

• The solute concentration from gypsum makes soil aggregates more stable.
• Gypsum prevents crusting and aids water infiltration. (shainberg et al. 1989)
• In a study by ARS gypsum has shown benefits in reducing P run-off.
• L. Darrell Norton is at the USDA-ARS National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory, has also done research showing the benefits of gypsum in reducing N and P run-off.

In addition we are exploring a new product that can be handled and spread like dry fertilizer. One pound of active ingredient (AI) can effectively flocculate up to 10 tons of soil under ideal conditions. This can be done very cost effectively.

• The Denver Water Board sponsored a study of sediment run-off, 10 pounds per acre of AI showed a 95% reduction in sediment run-off.
• Colorado State University sponsored a study with AI, and showed a 80% reduction in sediment run-off.
• In a study conducted by Wallace & Wallace dry-broadcasted AI reduced erosion by 75%-100%. 
• Using the combination of gypsum/AI can simultaneously improve crop yields 10-25% or more while reducing runoff, effectively making the cost of application free.

We could treat all the cropland acres in Iowa (27m) for approximately $20-$30/a, or $650 million, the cost being provided by the landowner, and recouped it in higher yields. As expected I have not recieved a response in almost a month.

Last week the Des Moines Register reported farm run off from Iowa is damaging the Gulf of Mexico. The question is now are you going to take action or wait for government mandates, taxes, and restrictions on fertilizer use.

You can work now to increase yields, increase organic matter and water infiltration and holding capacity, or continue to watch you soil erode, taking with it valuable nutrients and assuring more regulation.

We talk a lot about soil quality and soil biology. When we hear soil biology, earthworms and rhizobium are the first things that come to mind. There are many other soil life forms that deserve our attention. I will present information on the most beneficially ones over the next few months. As fertilizer prices continue to raise, it will be important to not only feed the crop, but also feed the organisms that enable the plant to access those high priced inputs.

I present Azotobacter

Azotobacter is a bacterium that can fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil without the aid of a legume. It is a great source of nitrogen to meet the needs of crops, has the capability rejuvenate the soil, and provides nutrients for other microbiology to max out nitrogen fixation. Its main fuel is carbon (organic matter), but it also requires calcium, and micronutrients for nitrogen fixation.

Besides N fixation Azotobacter improves seed germination, produces plant growth promoting hormones, and fungicidal substances. Azotobacter is the heaviest breathing organism and requires a large amount of organic carbon for its growth. It thrives in alkaline soils and is less effective in soils with poor organic matter content, low pH and high salts.

Azotobacter produces Thiamin, Riboflavin, B12, B1, Biotin, Gibberellins, and Cytocinins. Azotobacter produces substances that are required for Rhizobium bacteria, and Mycorrhize growth. Rhizobium is primarily responsible for nitrogen fixation in legumes. Plants growing in the presence of Mycorrhize have improved nutrient and water uptake, disease resistance and superior growth.

Azotobacter also has a symbiotic relationship with Phosphobacteria. Phosphobacteria as it’s name implies transfers phosphate from insoluble soil particles directly to the plant in soluble from. Azotobacter and Phosphobacteria fix phosphate more efficiently together than alone. Phosphobacteria alone increased potato yields by 6%, while together with Azotobacter increased yields 33%.

Ensure that your not missing out on free nitrogen, keep your pH at 6.5 or higher, supply the necessary carbon and calcium that this extremely beneficial bacteria needs with SuperCal 98G pelletized lime.

This week Calcium Products attended the Nebraska Ag business trade show in Omaha, NE. The show is closed show and you must register to attend. We had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

Midwest Labs presented information on lime quality. This can be confusing for many agronomists as well as farmers. They did a great job explaining why the fineness of the product is more important than the TNV. For example you can have 3 lime sources;

* not a misprint, it's acctually that ineffective.

ECCE is measured by taking the TNV times a fineness factor. If the product is too coarse it simple does not work, no matter how much you put on. You can look up the quality of your ag lime on our website here, if you can’t find it on one of those reports, Midwest Labs has a great program for testing the quality, or lack of it, of your ag lime. One last point, SuperCal 98G has always tested greater than 91% ECCE and less than 1% moisture.

Dr. Ray Ward of Ward Labs explained why it takes more sulfur on No-till acres. Here are some points I took away form Dr. Wards presentation:

• You can’t build organic matter (OM) without sulfur
• It takes 140 lbs of sulfur to build 1% organic matter, it has to be stored in the soil, if it leaches or volatilizes it does not do you any good.
• When sulfur breaks down in anaerobic conditions it volatilizes off as hydrogen sulfide. One of the main reasons hog pits smell so bad.
• In no-till OM does not breakdown quickly in the soil. OM has to decompose to release the sulfur stored in it. Since it takes longer to decompose in no-till crops are more likely to show sulfur deficiency.
• Fertilizing with a sulfate source of sulfur close to planting can drastically decrease sulfur deficiency and increase yields.

One of the new friends we meet this week was Agronomic Solutions. They specialize in all types of precision ag services and products. They work with both growers and retailers, to offer unbiased solutions and services tailored to your needs.

Offering an array of services and products; from GPS soil sampling, crop scouting, GPS boundary measuring, Agronomic consulting, and GPS equipment sales and support. They can help make sure you are getting the most out of those expensive fertilizers. Many of our dealers are already offering their services, contact you fertilizer dealer or check out their website for more information.

For many farmers this year holds more uncertainty than any in recent history. Extreme volatility in the markets, outrageous fuel and fertilizer prices, shortages of inputs, sky-high rent, and impending drought from speakers like Elwynn Taylor, why even put seed in the ground? While it is easy to focus on the negatives, don’t forget to stay positive, have a detailed plan in place, and stick to it for success.

One major components of any yearly plan is your fertility management plan. During droughty periods, or even when plenty of water is available, full yield potential is not realized if soil fertility is poor. With high input prices and talk of drought it can be tempting to cut corners, and pull back on fertilizer. The best way to lower risk is working to make sure your soil nutrients are in balanced in the proper amount and placement is timed for optimum uptake.

Having your soil nutrients in the optimum amounts (not sufficient) will;

• Increase water infiltration
• Stimulate root growth deeper and fuller to access water and nutrients
• Increase grain filling and yield

The starting point for any proper fertility management program is a Full Soil Analysis. (Grid sampling is a great way to apply lime, P, K, S, Zn, but if that is all your testing for you’re missing at least 11 other key components of yield. You might even find that one of the micros will boost your yield for less than additional units of N, P, and K. The cost of doing a full soil analysis on every grid could be the best money you spend this year, but I know that cost scares people. At a minimum pull a full analysis on a portion of grids so at least you have a baseline.) Having a full analysis run is one of the best ways to make sure that your supplying your crop the right nutrients in the right amounts.

With N, P, and K ranging from $500-$800 per ton, can you afford to apply more than is needed for proper fertilization?

Here are three examples of things you can adjust in your fertility management that you can only figure out by doing a full analysis.(Courtesy of Midwest Labs)

• If P1:P2 ratio is greater than 1:2, you may see; a greater response to starter as the ratio increases, increasing response to the use of sulfur and zinc, when the P2 is over 50 ppm, one can expect greater response to Zn.
• CEC, Cation Exchange Capacity measures the soil’s ability to hold nutrients. A good rule of thumb is for each point of CEC your soil will hold 10 lbs of N. So if you have a CEC of 5 your soil should hold 50 lbs of Nitrogen at one shot, if you have a CEC of 25, your soil should hold 250 lbs of N at one time. This is just a general guideline, but if you don’t know your CEC how do you know if the N you applied will be available to your crop.
• Soluble Salts, this is a must every time you sample. While extremely low amounts do not have a direct impact on plant health, the amount of water that infiltrates into you soil has a big direct impact. Soils with 0-.04 mmohs/cm are subject to dispersion and sealing. This means that any rain or irrigation water that falls on the soil does not go into the soil where it can be used by your crop, but ponds, and evaporates. Ponding is also a sign of de-nitrification. If you have a reading greater than 1 mmohs/cm, this can affect plant health, and can increase sealing and ponding.

If you have never had a complete analysis of your farms, what are you waiting for? Grain prices are at record highs, so are inputs, your only option is to raise more crop, more efficiently. One last point, while seed genetics are the best they have ever been, how can you begin to place varieties if you don’t know your fertility levels. How much better would that high-priced seed perform if you gave it the opportunity by having optimum fertility?
 

Soil amendments can be tricky; this is more due to the fact that soils and fertility contain so many variables. The best starting point is to have a complete soil analysis taken, and if your an irrigator a complete water analysis will also be helpful. Knowing only the pH or phosphorus and potassium levels is not enough to determine proper fertilization.

Once you have your completed soil analysis back, here is a list of items that can give you an idea if SuperCal SO4 will increase your yields.

1. When the soil pH is over 8.2 and maybe even if it is less.
2. When the subsoil pH is lower that 5.
3. When the soil particles disperse when water is added.
4. When water puddles on it.
5. When there is water logging in the soil.
6. When the soil crusts after irrigation or rain.
7. When there is excessive cracking of the soil after irrigation or rain.
8. When the soils contain clays that swell and contract.
9. When the soil contains clay that is very dusty when dry.
10. When intense rain falls on soil that is not acid and where nearly all solutes may be leached from the soil.
11. When no-till is used.
12. When organics (manure, composts, etc.) are simultaneously applied to the soil with gypsum.
13. When crops require the development of fruits or seeds.
14. When sulfur is deficient.
15. When exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP) is over 3 and defiantly if it is over 9.
16. When irrigation water contains substantial amounts of bicarbonate.
17. When irrigation water contains less than 200 parts per million of salts in solution (<0.3 mmho/cm).

Some of these problems can be corrected with as little as 100 pounds per acre, while others may take a few hundred pounds per acre. If your farm has one or more of the above conditions SuperCal SO4 deserves to be part of your regular fertility program.

Taken as an excerpt from Soil Conditioner and Amendment Technologies Volume I. This book and others on soil management can be found here.

Nationally recognized high yield soybean grower Ray Rawson once said “Don’t be a moron and think you get high yields by putting more-on.”

If 100 lbs of K is good 300 lbs is better, right?

I have had a number of farmers ask me at shows, “How much fertilizer do I need for this crop?”
Many are confused when I tell them, “I don’t know, do you have a soil analysis?”
Many reply with “No I haven’t.”
It really floors them when I tell them, “Without a proper analysis nobody can make an accurate recommendation.”

Not enough N, P & K is generally not your most limiting factors.* Making those nutrients and the 13 others available to your plants is. When was the last time a full soil analysis was taken on your farms?

With the price of N, P, and K going through the roof and continuing out of this world, does it really make sense to base your nutrient recommendations on 10-year-old information, how about 2-year-old information?

If your consultant makes a fertility recommendation without a proper soil analysis, fire that salesman, and find a proper consultant. With today’s input prices you cannot afford to work with someone that does not know how to read a soil analysis and make proper recommendations.

Did you know that adding sulfur makes your nitrogen work more efficiently? Having enough calcium in the right ratios helps to reduce nitrogen volatilization and leaching. Adding a high quality EDTA manganese when spraying roundup can reduce soybean “flash” and reduces stalk rots in corn. Low or high pH reduces availability of fertilizers, and decreases nodulation.

Don’t be a more-on, take proper soil samples, provide your crop with the proper amount of nutrients in the right amounts, and take more yield to the bin.

*If your thinking weather is your most limiting factor, you might be right. That is out of your control, but proper plant nutrition is not. Even in poor weather, properly managed crops will always out yield poorly managed crops.

In an article in Corn E Digest  OSU Extension Economist Barry Ward says that corn and soybean production costs are expected to increase 24-35%. He follows up with some steps to cut costs.

Mr. Ward why not suggest that farmers make what fertilizer is already in the soil available by liming?

We've discussed this before, here.

At a 5.5 pH, 25% on Nitrogen and Potassium is not available to crops. Over 50% of phosphorus is not plant available.

Seed selection is important, but pH is more important. At a 5.7 pH you lose 17% of your corn’s genetic potential, before it’s planted and it doesn’t matter what hybrid.

Lime price have remained relatively stable compared to other fertilizer products.

Does it really make sense to continue to dump high priced acid and salty fertilizer on you ground when it cost $400-500 per ton? So you bought it a little cheaper in the fall, if 25-50% is not available to your crop, that’s like paying more up front for less.

We know that proper soil sampling, keeping pH above 6.5 (for corn), having proper levels of micro and secondary nutrients (not adequate) will produce higher yields for less than blasting the soil with P and K, even when it was cheap!

Sometimes changing what you’re doing can be as difficult as well, pulling teeth.

Last week I had my wisdom teeth pulled. I was in and out in 20 minutes. They shot me full of Novocain and yanked them with a pair of pliers. It wasn’t too bad… until the Novocain wore off.
I spent the rest of the day on the couch, only taking one call.

Tuesday was not much better. I worked for two hours at a time in between pain pill induced comas. By Wednesday it was tough starting out but I felt better by the end of the day. By Friday I was back to normal.

There really is no good time to make a big change. I had lots of dealers to see last week, and there are lots of great foods to eat this week. So I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t get all my work done or get to eat any of those great Christmas treats.

The alternative was not much better, while my teeth were not impacted; they were very hard to keep clean and were developing cavities. Sure I could have kept them and every 5 years or so had them filled, less pain up front, but more costly in the long run. What if one broke off in the future, ever lost a crown on a holiday? I know people that have, not a lot of fun not being able to enjoy all those great holiday deserts.

Each day we all face the opportunities to make changes in our business and our lives. It may be more difficult in the short run, but don’t forget about the trouble it could cause from not changing, or what is to be gained by changing.

As traditional fertilizer continue to jump in price every week, can your really afford the same levels of N, P and K? Are there things you’re missing or could change in your fertility program that would significantly increase yields while keeping your total input dollars the same or less? When’s the last time you had a soil sample taken to even know what your fertility levels are?

Over the next couple of weeks hopefully you have a little time to slow down, enjoy Christmas and family and have a little time to explore how adjusting a couple of things in your fertility program (while scary and uncertain) may be the best thing you can do for your farm.

Merry Christmas from everyone at Calcium Products!

We learned at the university that it takes nitrogen, starter, planting the proper hybrid, planting earlier, and increasing population to grow corn. However, most growers don't grow 300 bushel corn, but are doing the above 5 things. So what are the farmers that grow high yield corn doing, they are focusing on their soil.

Soil sample
Not just for P and pH, do a full analysis. While having enough P and the proper pH are some major limiting factors, they are not all of them. Do a full analysis at least every other year. If you're having a field grid sampled, have them pull a couple of extra samples to run a full analysis on.

Budget for soil maintenance
Top producing farmers know that their soil will always perform if they add back what they take every year. Plan on a yearly maintenance program, budgeting money for lime and/or gypsum, P, secondary, and micronutrients. Once you're in a nutrient deficient situation, it takes time and is expensive to correct.

Scout the whole field
Scout the soil, stop scouting only half your crop; know what is happening in the root zone. Most farmers are only concerned with what is happening with their crop above ground. They neglect more than half the plant. Dig next to the row, how are the roots growing, is there a visible hard pan, is moisture making it down into the soil profile, do you have large numbers of earthworms. If you cannot get a shovel in the ground by standing on it, you have compaction and your roots will not be able grow properly.

Proper residue management
Residue management starts with the header attachment on the combine. With corn make sure the header is processing the stalks, and the combine is only processing the ear and husks. Not only will this increase combine efficiency, it will distribute the residue more evenly, resulting in faster decomposition of stalks. Complete and proper decomposition increases organic matter and returns valuable nutrients to the soil.

Figure out what else is missing
For many farmers it is not a lack of N, P, K or pH that is keeping their yields low it is something else. Ignore lack of rainfall, and other things that are out of your control. Think about the things you can change; tillage, micronutrient levels, and organic matter. If your having problems achieving high yields, it is likely due to one or more problems associated with your soil.

Calcium Products, lower input costs, higher yields, better soil

It is true that NPK is used in greater percentages than calcium, but calcium is used more by weight and volume than any other nutrient. Calcium is rarely considered as a nutrient at all, only as a soil buffer to adjust pH.

Calcium should be considered the most important nutrient, and more than simply just a tool to move the pH scale. It plays a major role in the physiology of the plant, strengthening its physical structure, increasing nutrient uptake and protecting from disease. The importance of calcium in the soil, includes; the reduction of soil compaction, increased water infiltration, and helping to provide a better environment for the proliferation of beneficial bacteria. Some research even suggests that calcium plays a role in weed populations. To associate calcium only as a buffer of pH is agronomicly ignorant.

Calcium Benefits
Calcium neutralizes soil acidity
Improves soil structure and quality
Prevents soil crusting
Reduces soil salinity
Reduces erosion and phosphorous loss
Improves water penetration
Promotes root development
Calcium stimulates growth of "soil life", including nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
Every plant needs calcium to grow
Calcium helps create a healthy environment for your plants
Only nitrogen and potassium are required in larger amounts by plants
Once fixed, calcium is not mobile in the plant
It is an important constituent of cell walls and can only be supplied in the xylem sap
If the plant runs out of a supply of calcium, it cannot remobilize calcium from older tissues
If transpiration is reduced, the calcium supply to growing tissues will become inadequate
Calcium is found in many minerals in soil, but is relatively insoluble.
A common misconception is that if the pH is high, adequate calcium is present
High levels of other cations such as magnesium, iron, sodium, and potassium can increase pH
Plant available calcium determines the uptake of all other nutrients into the plant
It is the carrier of all other nutrients to the plant
As calcium content in the plant drops so can the protein, mineral and energy levels of the plant
Calcium is not considered a mobile nutrient, but can leach with excess nitrogen
Over fertilization of nitrogen and potassium will reduce calcium availability
High potassium levels reduces the uptake of calcium
You will usually find an increase in all mineral levels in a plant following the correction of low calcium
Calcium plays a critical metabolic role in carbohydrate removal.
Calcium neutralizes cell acids
Study after study shows calcium at the optimum level will decrease disease in most plants
Yield, quality, taste, shelf life and disease resistance are all functions of good calcium uptake

SuperCal SO4 and SuperCal 98G are great sources of calcium. Our pelletized processing makes it easy to add calcium to your dry fertilizer program. See your local dealer or give us a call to see how easy it can be to reduce input costs, and increase yields.

Everyone wants to know how much does that cost? What is the price of that?

Are you concerned with the value on the bill (price), or are concerned with what that purchase can do for your bottom line, how it affects other areas of your business (cost). Price and cost are two separate terms, with two separate meanings.

Example: Comparing a JD 9660 combine versus a JD 4400

Price of JD 9660 - $150,000 no heads

Price of JD 4400 - $6500 w/heads

If you only ask the price, the 4400 sounds like a bargain. It’s 1/5 the cost of a 9660, has the heads as part of the deal. If they both can harvest grain what else besides the price is there to compare?

The problem is if you don’t figure the cost of each combine it is not an accurate comparison.

There are many other cost that could be considered as well, for the guy farming 150 acres a 4400 is likely the right machine. If you farm a 1000 acres or more a bigger machine makes more sense. If you are not doing this kind of analysis with each purchase on your farm, you may be missing a better opportunity, losing money on a poor purchase, and not operating as efficiently as possible.

This kind of analysis applies to your fertilizer inputs as well. What is the value on the bill for lime (price). Should you buy a lime product that is $110 per ton, or one that is $22 per ton. Did you stop to figure the cost?

After you have added the costs up there is no comparison. You get what you pay for, lime spread where it needs to go, increasing yield, reducing other input costs, for less money per acre than 1 bushel of beans!

So next you make a purchase for your operation, is the price really too high, or are the costs right.

In a past blog I mentioned having poor OM (organic matter) can short your corn crop the number one nutrient needed for growth.

That nutrient is carbon, more specifically Carbon Dioxide. You may have noticed that CO2 has been getting a lot of press lately, but did you know; the atmosphere contains 400 ppm or 0.04% carbon dioxide, this present-day atmosphere concentration is just above "suffocation" level for green plants.

On a hot windless july day when your corn is in full tassel, it uses more CO2 than is available in the atmosphere. Where then can your crop get enough CO2 to continue respiration? It comes from having a quality soil that is high in OM and humus. As the OM breaks down, CO2 is released to be used by the plant for growth, making more OM in the form of increased plant growth and oxygen.

Here is a great article on CO2, and why high quality soils are essential for increased yield.

Quick points;

For comparison I sent soil samples from the garden and field to International Ag Labs. International Ag Labs does a great job helping their clients develop better soils, not just increase NP&K levels.

As reported in past blogs about the importance of soil quality (A Pictorial of High Quality Soil, Improving Water Infiltration, and Quality Soil Update) I promised that I would run soil tests on the field and the garden (I am waiting on tests form another lab). There were some striking differences. The garden had almost double the organic matter, much better pH, and double the calcium content.

One of the main differences is pH, the field has a pH of 5.0 compared to the garden, which had 6.5 pH. 

Fun Facts: 

At a pH of 5.0 the potential yield of corn is reduced by 27%, soybeans by 21% and alfalfa by 91%.

At a pH of 5.0 1/2 of N, 1/3 of P, and 1/2 of K is unavailable for plant uptake.

At a pH of 5.0 nodulation is reduced up to 40%

Click here to view lab report

With the high costs of fertilizer and fuel, wouldn't it make sense to make those inputs work harder for you? Working to improve you soil quality makes high priced fertilizers more available to your plants, resulting in decreased costs. High quality soils allow irrigation water and rainfall to infiltrate into the pore space, making it available to plants. Ponding is the first sign that water is not entering the soil, eventually causing de-nitrification, and evaporating, wasting fuel, fertilizer, and lowering yield.

Adding SuperCal 98G pelletized lime and SuperCal SO4 pelletized gypsum to your fertility program will ensure your soils maintain the proper pH, superior infiltration rates, reduce future input costs, decrease soil erosion, and increase yields.

Calcium Products, lower input costs, higher yields, better soil

We at Calcium Products have been promoting quality soil for years. Our latest advertisement in Iowa Farmer Today is focusing explicitly on Soil Quality. Check out our previous posts on soil quality and look for our advertisements this winter in other farming publications.

Our products are key in increasing organic matter, soil flocculation, stabilizing nitrogen, and reducing erosion. In the past we have had to pull information from many, many research papers and websites to bring you  information on improving soil quality.

I have discovered a great website that should aid everyone in improving their soil quality. The site was created by the NRCS National Soil Quality Team, the National Soil Tilth Lab, NCERA-59 Scientists, and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Calcium is a key ingredient in improving soil structure and reducing fertilizer losses.

Having proper pH will improve nutrient utilization, reduce losses, improve the genetic ability of seed, and improve herbicide efficacy. SuperCal 98G is the best way to lime. It is finely ground high calcitic lime, pelletized to reduce drift and improve precision application.

For high pH, SuperCal SO4 is a high quality gypsum that is also finely ground and pelletized to reduce drift and improve performance. Gypsum has been recognized by the USDA to reduce phosphorus runoff.

Whether you have high pH or low Calcium Products has a product to help you reach your yeild goals while protecting your most important asset, your soil.

Calcium Products, lower input costs, higher yields, better soil quality

This week I have shown pictures of the difference between a quality soil and poor soil.

Since my last update on Wednesday we received an additional half in of rain through Thursday. This brings the 7 day total to close to 3 inches. The really neat thing is that the top 1/2 inch of the quality soil in the garden area is already dry! We have had one day of light wind and sun. The field/poor soil is still sopping wet. (Note I will also be taking soil samples so we can compare them that way.)

So with more rain in the forcast for early next week if you had quality soil you would be back in the field harvesting while your neighbor watches.

You can start improving you soil, plant sooner and harvest quicker or watch your corn and beans shell and lodge. As a bonus for having quality soil it compacts less when you do have to operate in less than optimal conditions and will stick to your boots and equipment less making it a little more tollerable to be working.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and I hope everyone gets back into the field really soon!

Calcium Products, lower inputs costs, higher yields, harvesting before your neighbors

Were not going to talk about the handy and tasty vegitable spray. We want you to introduce you to PAM, a.k.a polyacrylamides. While increasing soil quality and organic matter to combat soil erosion is the ultimate goal, PAM is a product that can help today. There have been many acres of marginal ground broken in the last year, some soil is highly erodeable, some is of poor quality. SuperCal 98G and SuperCal SO4 will help improve the soil structure over time, PAM can help reduce erosion and increase infiltration the moment it’s applied. 

PAM is an environmentally friendly, water-soluble substance that  binds soil into particles that are too large to be carried away by typical runoff. PAM binds particles of silt and clay together, making them more resistant to erosion.

In the U.S., PAM’s are used extensively in potable water treatment, for dewatering of sewerage sludges, washing and pealing of fruits and vegetables, clarification of sugar juice and liquor, in adhesives and paper in contact with food, as thickeners and suspending agents in animal feeds, in cosmetics. No significant negative impacts have been documented for aquatic, or crop species when PAM is applied at recommended concentrations and rates.

PAM has proven to

• Reduce sediment runoff soil loss 80% - 98%
• Increases water infiltration up to 60%
• Lowers concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus & pesticides in runoff water
• Reduces hardening and crusting of soils
• Aids in plant growth on high-grade slopes
• No bioaccumulation in crops
• Cost effective and time saving

Conservation practices that require additional field operations usually occur during busy periods in the farming schedule are also avoided. Furthermore, conservation practices that reduce sediment loss such as; sediment ponds, vegetative filter strips or buried-pipe waste water systems, still lose most of the clay-sized solids, the soil component most critical to sustained soil fertility. These solids also are most linked to pesticide, and nutrient loss in run-off waters.

Halting erosion prevents exposure of soil not treated with herbicides, thus reducing potential late-season weed problems. Applied pesticide and fertilizer inputs are better retained on the field. Uniform water infiltration from upper to lower field ends, has shown to improve potato yield and grade, and reduces the risk of nitrate leaching.

Many farmers, who have viewed traditional conservation practices as cumbersome, intrusive, or ineffectual, and expensive, adopt PAM as an attractive inexpensive alternative. The typical $15 to $35/acre per crop is partially or entirely returned by savings in erosion-related field operations, improved infiltration, water conservation, or crop responses.

We hope this short introduction to PAM gives you some ideas to help your marginal, and highly productive irrigated ground be more productive. This article was condensed from polymersinc.com. Read the entire article here.

A pound of lime is a pound of lime. It takes the same amount of lime to change pH no matter what form it is in. Pel lime doesn't have the lasting power that ag lime has. These are some comments made when people refer to pel lime. While they seem accurate, in truth they are costing you money.

Lime is not created equal. Lime is the generic term for calcium carbonate. Pure calcium carbonate is also called calcite. Lime on the other hand can vary in purity, form 50% to 175% CCE. Lime products that are over 100% generally contain elements such as Magnesium, or are considered hazardous, such as hydrated lime.

While it does take the same amount of calcium carbonate in a lab setting to neutralize low pH, in the field it is another situation. In order for lime to neutralize pH in needs to first be applied to the acid soil. Which is sometimes an impossible thing to achieve with a finely ground powder. Even on days when the wind is not blowing, applying ag lime with spinners launches the lime into the air, allowing it to drift for miles.

Once the lime gets to the soil it needs to be finely ground to achieve a pH change. Most ag lime is a 20-mesh average screen size. Lime that is meshed larger than 30 mesh will only be 5-50% effective the first year. After 4 years it will only be 15-50% effective. A product that is only 50% effective is an incredible waste of time and money.

Coarse lime is ineffective, wasting you money	Effective fine lime drifts, wasting you money

The reason that ag lime seems to last long is, because of the mesh size, it doesn't breakdown and do much good for 3-4 years. What other ag input sells it self on not providing a return on investment for 3 -4 years? The fact is that none do.

Today's times of low margin, high cost inputs demands that your dollars work as hard as possible. Get yield response the first year, pH increase with every application. Make your high dollar fertilizers work for you. Don't let them be tied up by low pH. Feed the soil what it needs to stimulate and grow the microbiology that can decompose residue and recycle the nutrients locked in the residue.

SuperCal 98G is the industries highest quality pelleted lime. Finely ground for maximum efficiency. Manufactured using proprietary methods to assure evenly sized pellets for even spreading, resulting in uniform crop growth and response.

Calcium Products, lower input costs, better yields, lime that works as fast as you do

The increase in the demand for fertilizers world-wide has drastically increased the cost of fertilizers. In addition to the cost, availability may be difficult in the coming years. Whether due to cost or availability many growers are looking for alternatives and products to improve yields with less NPK fertilizers. We would like to suggest humates.

Humate Benefits

• Improved Water Retention, and water holding capacity
• Humates can hold up to 20 times their weight in water. 
• Humic substances can enhance the release of fixed K from montmorillonite soils.
• Addition of humic acids can increase P uptake by 25%.
• Humic substances will increase length, and number of lateral roots, seedling growth after germination, nutrient availability and nutrient uptake.
• These substances also affect a wide range of enzymatic processes.

Humates, play a vital role in soil fertility and plant nutrition. Plants grown on soils which contain adequate humates are less subject to stress, are healthier, produce higher yields, and the nutritional quality of feeds are superior. Humic substances are important in soil fertility and plant nutrition because of the part they play in the life cycle on earth. The life-death cycle involves a recycling of the carbon from plants to animals through the soil and air and back into the living plant.

Humates have been “forgotten “ when it was discovered that soluble acidic based N P and K fertilizers could stimulate plant growth. Continued use of these acidic fertilizers has decreased humic substances in the soil. This decrease is the main cause of leaching and erosion. Giving higher priority to soil humus and humates is a must to improve soil condition and yield.

Humic substances are recognized by most soil scientists and agronomists as the most important component of a healthy fertile soil. In addition, by understanding how these carbon containing substances function, professionals will have a solid foundation on which to design truly “complete” fertilizer recommendations.

Humic substances neutralize the soil pH and liberate carbon dioxide. Repeated field studies have provided evidence that the addition of humic substances to soils helps to neutralize the pH of those soils. Both acidic and alkaline soils are neutralized. Once the soil is neutralized, many trace elements formerly bound in the soil are available to plants.

Humic substances also liberate carbon dioxide (CO2) from calcium carbonates present within the soil. The plant may take up the released CO2 or it may form carbonic acids. The carbonic acids act on soil minerals to release plant nutrients. The application of either dry or liquid humic substances to soils dramatically increases fertilizer efficiency.

Humic substances enhance uptake of major plant nutrients. As the level of humic substances in soils become depleted the misleading demand for higher concentrations of N P and K results. Many growers have over the past several years reported increasing demands for soluble acid fertilizers in order to maintain crop yields. 

Increased leaching of nitrate fertilizer into the ground water is  a warning of poor soils and reflects the loss of soil humic substances.

The above article was condensed from:

ORGANIC MATTER, HUMUS, HUMATE, HUMIC ACID, FULVIC ACID AND HUMIN:
THEIR IMPORTANCE IN SOIL FERTILITY AND PLANT HEALTH

Dr. Robert E. Pettit
Emeritus Associate Professor Texas A&M University

Read Dr. Pettit’s entire article by clicking on the title

 Calcium Products, lower input costs, higher yeilds, more information

This week’s issue of Iowa Farmer Today features a guest opinion column by Kendall Lamkey. The focus of the article is the decreasing quality of Iowa soil. We argree with most of the article; the soil is our number one resource, soil gets treated like dirt, Iowa soil is being depleted rapidly, and organic matter does not get enough focus.

He is also right on track that the degradation of the soil is linked to human health, plant production, and water quality. I am not sure that we necessarily need new approaches to preserve and maintain the soil. We need to do a better job of marketing the basics of fertility and soil management.

Soil management is not easy, sexy, or exciting. There is no instant gratification like with tillage (which generally degrades the soil). There is no sense of accomplishment like watching the corn emerge through the soil. Understanding cations and anions takes more time than 0.7 x yield goal. Soil management is hard, that’s why most people ignore it.

Calcium Products is committed to helping you improve your soils. We have been doing it for over ten years. SuperCal 98G and SuperCal SO4 are key components to improving your soil. We have developed these products to make the old hard and difficult process of amending the soil easy and efficient. Keep checking back, we’ll continue to bring you information and ideas to improve your soil, yields, and bottom line.

I as I drove across Iowa last week I couldn’t help but notice that there was a lot of silage being chopped. In some areas the corn was extremely good with yield estimates in the 220 range, while others areas yields were estimated at 70 bushels.

This fall will you treat the fields chopped for silage like the fields where just the grain was harvested? Will you adjust fertilizer rates in the sections of the fields that were chopped?

When 200-bushel corn is chopped for silage the following nutrients are removed.

Phosphate 120#       Potash 260#     Calcium 42#     Sulfur 32#

When 200-bushel corn is harvested for grain the following nutrients are removed.

Phosphate 70#         Potash 52#       Calcium 4#      Sulfur 14#

Chopping generally requires that the extra nutrients removed be replaced with increased fertilizer rates. Removing the stover removes 10x as much Ca, 5x as much K, 2x as much S, and 2x as much P. In addition to the nutrients lost, removal of up to 6 tons of stover can lead to a decrease of organic matter since it is not returned to the soil.

Please do not misunderstand; I am not against chopping corn for silage, there are many great benefits to it as a feed source. I am against poor soil. Soil that is low in nutrients such as calcium, sulfur, phosphate, and potash grow poor crops.

Low organic matter is the main cause for many other problems; compaction, poor structure, poor nutrient holding capacity, poor water holding capacity, erosion, crusting, diseases and carbon dioxide release. Crop residues are about 40% carbon. Residue turns into organic matter that releases CO₂ throughout the growing season.

Having poor OM can short your corn crop the number one nutrient needed for growth (we’ll get into this more this winter).

The bottom line is SuperCal 98G is the best source for lime, and a great source of carbon dioxide. 100 pounds of 98G will supply all the calcium removed by chopping and supply some carbon that is removed as stover. SuperCal SO4 is a great source of soluble calcium and sulfur. 100 pounds of SO4 will supply half the calcium removed and all the sulfur. Whether you have high pH or low we can help you grow high yielding corn.

Calcium Product, lower input costs, higher yields, more silage

With harvest fast approaching stalk quality is a hot topic. This time of year the only thing one can do to minimize loss from disease is harvest early. However it is time to take steps to reduce or prevent rots and disease for next year.

Now is the time to soil sample and plan lime applications.

Low pH may also be the cause of many stalk and stand problems. Having proper pH can reduce the amount and severity of diseases, while increasing the availability of nutrients already present in the soil.  According to Plant Pathology, by George Nicholas Agrios, calcium reduces the severity of rhizoctonia, sclerotium (white mold), fusarium, and nematodes. The Plant Pathologist's Pocketbook states, calcium generally enhances resistance against disease, including post-harvest diseases.

Soil pH, calcium level, nitrogen form, and the availability of nutrients plays a major role in disease management. Adequate crop nutrition makes plants more tolerant of or resistant to disease. A direct correlation between adequate calcium levels, and pH, and decreasing levels of Fusarium occurrence has been established for a number of crops, including tomatoes, cotton, melons, and several ornamentals.

Too much phosphate can also be critical. Increasing phosphorus rates above the level needed to grow the crop can increase the severity of Fusarium wilt in certain crops. Avoid applying excessive levels of nitrogen. High N:K ratios have increased severity of many diseases. Work to maintain an adequate level of calcium and potassium in the soil

Don’t forget about fall-seeded crops.
In a study conducted by Washington State University, the incidence of Cephalosporium stripe decreased significantly when soil pH was raised from 5.1 to 6.0. Grain-yield and test weight increased significantly with increasing soil pH in three out of four years.
If you’re planning on sowing wheat, don’t forget to lime. SuperCal 98G can be used as a seed carrier to reduce lime costs, and increase yields.

Calcium Prodcuts, lower input costs, higher yields, less disease

It seems like every week I see more corn blown down. This fall many agronomists and farmers will spend hours finding the right hybrids to avoid lodging next year. Picking the right hybrid for your situation is important, and hybrids with good roots should be used.

How much time will you spend finding ways to improve soil quality and fertility? We think taking care of the soil is even more important than hybrid selection. Soils that have good physical properties will make a strong rooting hybrid perform even better.

SuperCal SO4 increase water and oxygen infiltration in the soil. This creates a friendly environment for beneficial insects and bacteria, which increases rooting, reducing lodging. 

SuperCal SO4 contains 17% sulfur in the sulfate form. Sulfur is key in converting nitrate to ammonium N. Having high amounts of sulfur ensures that expensive nitrogen in fully utilized, resulting in a stronger, better yielding plant.

 DKC 52-40, Winnebago County, IA

Applied 300 lbs, SuperCal SO4	No SuperCal SO4

This customer noticed that the untreated portions of his field had more down corn. A walk of the field showed that stalk quality was much better in the SuperCal SO4 treated area, the ears were bigger and more filled out. In the non-treated area the corn was germinating on the ear!

We will post pictures of the field and will have yield maps available after harvest to see what the yield difference was between SuperCal SO4 and the untreated lodging corn.

Calcium Products, lower input costs, higher yields, better hybrid standablity

If you’re in the crop inputs business then you know that everyone sells what you sell. With the high cost of inputs, the customer is looking for the lowest price on nitrogen and glyphosate. The successful dealer knows that both those statements are false.

If you sell your services at the lowest price, you will only be successful until a cheaper or better consultant comes along. While customers do look for fair prices, it is not the only criteria for doing business with you;

Trust and integrity

Clean and professional offices and facilities

Completing jobs a time

Spreaders and applicators that are well maintained

Staff that has knowledge of GPS/GIS equipment

Knowledge of innovative products and practices

Continuing education and training

When a customer ask why he should spend fifty cents more an acre for your services, be prepared to explain it. Explain it in specific terms relevant to that customers operation. “We are full service”, or “our equipment is better”, will not cut it. “We are not the cheapest, but have always sprayed your fields on time”, is expected from every dealer, by every customer today.

The successful dealer knows that while they offer products like nitrogen and glyphosate, the real sale is their expertise. Helping their customers find the best solutions for their operation, not selling them the cheapest products, is what makes them and their customers successful

Your customers will spend millions of dollars with you; they want more than full service and cheap prices. They expect that your expertise will help them be successful, that you are always looking for innovative ways to make their lives more profitable and easier.

We can help you bring innovative products and service to your customers. Give us a call.

Like health care costs, crop inputs have risen sharply in the past few years. Not only has the cost of inputs raised, the number of inputs has continued to increase. With today’s high yield goals and high dollar investment to raise a crop every input is considered to raise a better crop.

What does it take for today’s producer to reach their yield goals; an N stabilizer, side dressing, foliar feeding, seed treatment, stacked hybrids, herbicide, fungicide, insecticide, stock chopping, and/or heavy tillage to remove crop residue, dirt work to fill in gullies. I realize not everyone has these problems, or does all these steps every year, but if you’re doing more than 3-4 of these every year there may be another cause of your problems.

The symptoms are one or more of the following; poor nitrogen utilization and leaching, seedling diseases, soil crusting, excessive weed pressure and hard to eradicate weeds, white mold and other foliar disease, nematodes and other insects, poor organic matter, residue that does not breakdown, and erosion.

Diagnosis -- POOR SOIL QUALITY

Many of today’s newest agricultural inputs are great tools, but are relied on as a solution. They are only treatments for a pre-existing condition. Improving your soil is the curative. If your soil quality is already great, why not implement preventive steps to keep it that way. It is much easier to keep you soil in optimal condition than to improve it.

SuperCal SO4 & 98G are key components for many of our customers fertility programs. Helping them improve their soil, leading to increase yields, and reduced costs. We can show how to do the same, as well as other tools and techniques for soil improvement. Look for future posts on soil quality improvement in the future.

Calcium Products, lower input costs, higher yields, better soil

The first day of Farm Fest is under our belts. It was an interesting day. We meet a dowser, a writer for a magazine, a couple of politicians, and lots of farmers and agronomist. If you are planning on coming up to the show we are in the big yellow tent, it's between the red and blue tents.

We heard lots of good stories today, and had lots of questions asked. One in particular caught me off guard.

Reporter: "If your selling lime and gypsum, why does you booth show a cafe scene?"

Me: "It got you to stop and ask me about it didn't it, actually it is part of a marketing campaign."

What are you doing to get your customers to take time to stop and talk with you?

Having poor turnouts for your customer meetings? Have you changed the format and topics lately?

Does the cost of fertilizer have you thinking about not talking about it anytime soon? If you're thinking about it, your customers are. Why not include that in fall tour discussions. It may be a good time to add that fixing pH will make their fertilizer work better.

Having you customers ask you about SuperCal latter is a lot easier than "trying" to tell them what it will do for them today.

The old adage, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, holds true. Don't show them the water, tell them how clear, cooling, and refreshing it is. You're thirsty now aren't you. It is strange but it works.  Don't tell your customers the whole story, even if they ask. Most people cannot place themselves in the story. Give them a few details, and let them make their own story, it's better than yours anyway.

Many farmers are bracing for the fall fertilizer season. The cost of dry fertilizers this fall is expected to be at all time highs. For farmers looking to increase production and reach high corn yields while reducing input costs seems impossible.

Soil pH testing is the best place to start when planning a fertility program. Having low pH causes plant nutrients to be tied up. According to research done by Midwest Laboratories, a pH of 6.5 ties up 24% of available phosphorus. If your pH is 6.0, then P tie-up increases to 48%, and 24% of N is not available to your crops.

The cost of not liming soil at a 6.0 pH, 200-bushel corn goal:

$36/a lost in wasted inputs

Yield loss of corn, resulting from low pH, 34 bushels, priced at $3.50 =

$119/a lost in yield reduction due to low pH

The economic loss of farming ground with low pH is astounding. Keeping you soil at neutral pH will pay for itself many times over.

SuperCal 98G can eliminate the yield loss and fertilizer tie-up associated with acid soils. By applying a few hundred pounds as part of a maintenance fertility plan, the high cost of traditional ag lime programs can be eliminated.

The high price of soybeans have you thinking of growing more beans. Low pH creates an even bigger yield loss, 20% with a 5.7 pH. Testing has shown that even 200 pounds can return over 4 bushels on soybeans.

Stop wasting high cost fertilizer, applying SuperCal 98G makes fertilizer work better!

This week I attended an annual meeting for a large retail group. One of the discussions was about the fertilizer situation in the coming year. What was their take?

There will not be adequate amounts for 2008 due to;

Demand world wide is at an all time high

60% of US fertilizer stocks are imported

Freight to the US has tripled in the past few years

Fall needs have been decided in May/June.

With the exception of Urea expect that there will not be enough other products to meet demand.

At Calcium Products we see this trend as well. I attended a meeting last fall and these comments were echoed. I will be attending a number of fertilizer seminars over the next few months and continue to update you.

So what does this mean for the grower?

Customers unwilling to pay higher prices for inorganic fertilizer will need to find alternatives or change crops. If corn pushes above $4 next year, many will increase corn acres, increasing demand for fertilizer. Most dealers have already locked in their fertilizers for 2008, so expect the price of fertilizer to continue higher. Soybean processors will need to pay above $9/bu to offset any increase in corn price.

If changing the cropping system not an option, then the other option is changing inputs.

In trials 80 lbs of N and 200 lbs of SuperCal 98G yielded 173.8 bushels. 160 lbs of N alone yielded 175.6 bushels. With today's nitrogen costs reaching $0.50 per pound the additional cost of N was $40. The average cost of 200 lbs of SuperCal 98G is around $17.

The lower N rate with SuperCal 98G added cost the grower $57 per acre. The high rate N cost the grower $80 per acres. The premium for the additional 2 bushels was $23 dollars!

Urea may be the cheapest form of N available for the 2008 growing season. The prilled nature of SuperCal 98G pelletized lime, allows it to perfectly mix with any dry fertilizer. Less application trips further lowers the cost of inputs.

Give us a call or contact one of our dealers to see how you can lower your costs and increase production.