With planting slowly starting across some parts of the country, other areas are still reeling from heavy rain, and the northern states even expect more snow this week. What all these areas seem to have in common however is that time for ground prep seems to be awfully short, again, for this summer crop season. This will mean for many growers that they have not been able to apply all fertilizer up-front before the planting window opens and they’ll therefore be looking to top and side dress their fertilizer instead.
Top and side dressing however will allow growers to variable rate apply fertilizer at those times of the season when the crop needs it most. By analyzing the crop and the expected weather patterns, growers that apply fertilizer during the season are also able to spread their risk and expenses throughout the season instead of incurring the majority of this expense before the season even starts.
Protecting the Fertilizer Investment
Current commodity prices force growers to be very careful with the inputs they apply in order to remain profitable. A common way to protect a ‘fertilizer investment’ is using products such as urease inhibitors and others to minimize ammonia volatilization or nitrogen leaching and ensure that fertilizer stays in the plant root uptake zone instead of drainage ditches and the river systems. Increasingly, however, growers and agronomists are starting to critically analyze farm data and use this to tailor the amount of fertilizer applied not only to the actual crop’s needs but the business’s needs as well.
We see more and more Agworld users utilize the ability of our platform to not only spatially analyze yield data and soil tests but also incorporate their budgets and plans as an extra layer of data to ensure that their fertility plan matches their budget as well as crop needs. Where traditionally only the geospatial field factors might have been taken into account when creating fertilizer prescriptions, taking the business side of a farming operation into account is becoming increasingly more important. As the growing season progresses, Agworld users are able to continuously monitor their expenses and expected profit, so that they are able to adjust their inputs accordingly.
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New in Agworld
In order to help our users get the maximum ROI from their fertilizer this year, we recently released a feature that allows you to import prescriptions from other software systems and use them in the Agworld workflow. Now you can consistently manage and report on what’s been done across a farm, regardless of whether the prescriptions originated in Agworld or your other favorite tools. Schedule your day, record your application details and measure your performance across all of your jobs.
Additionally, we released an improvement that makes applying multi-bin prescription applications easier. Convert multiple prescriptions into the same job activity from the prescriptions index by selecting your prescriptions, converting to an activity and choosing ‘create multi-bin jobs per field’.
If you have any questions about how Agworld can help you optimize your fertility plan this year, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or anyone else in the Agworld team!
