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Nitrogen

Yes it is high and gonna get higher by spring so it might be to your advantge to buy some now,China is not helping with this,they are taking alot of it,plus with more corn on corn acres the demand is high,thats what i hear from all my reports
 
Saw a guy on TV the other day predicting $400-$450 N next spring.

This is gonna hurt corn acres and production without ethanol being in the picture.

I put out 44% Urea 2 weeks before Christmas. Was $300 bucks. Only needed 10 tons, could have gotten it for $290 for a semi load. :lol:
 
yep,thats what i am hearing also over 400 by spring,if you can get it,someplants are out yet,they havent been able to get any
 
I was only hearinig the price in units and that was bad enough.. Trying to figure out how much we will need on the annual field this year. Cows deposit a lot of manure out there for the Barley to grow on but the barley will eat that all up before we get to the Millet planting... Decisions, decisions, at least I don't have to buy any Phosphate this year... Or ever.
 
I m hearing that 46-0-0 is going to be darn close to $500 a tonne come spring. We use a fair bit of 46-0-0 when we seed in one pass with the air seeder so Im not looking forward to it. :roll: I think we will be growing a lot of oats because they dont take as much nitrogen. :)
 
Ouch. Bought a boxcar full of 46-0-0 before planting wheat to save a few bucks, but of course the railroad lost the damn boxcar...finally made it to the right destination and not a moment too soon.
 
We bought a bunch of urea last week for $440 Canadian that our dealer had booked at a good price and offered to his best customers first. Anything he didn't have booked is already at $500.
 
Isnt it funny how when grain prices start to sneak up fertilizer and chemical takes a good jump as well. Doesnt seem to happen when grain prices go down though. :roll:
 
It sure is nice not to have to worry about. Looks like the decisions made 3 years ago to switch to biological farming were the right ones.

$8 an acre inputs are not too shabby.
 
RR, I know you're close to a lot of poultry facilaties, do you use litter? We are 80 miles north of Springfield and we have it trucked in here. Even with the freight we think it is a better deal than commercial.
 
Angusguy, I spent $8 an acre to put in and take off my barley in 2006. No chemicals. That was seed, organic seed treat and fuel costs.

1 field went 42 bushels and 1 went 32. The best I had ever done on that second one was 35 with $60 of fertilizer and chemical.

My bottom line is better even with lower than the neighbors yields. My land smells better and is more mellow. I am in year 3-4 of no/reduced chemicals.
 
8 bucks for seed and fuel and treatment... Yikes... I think when we put Barley in we spend more in seed alone but we are planting real dense because we are going for forage and not grain.. That being said I think we got it estimated at 110 bushel Oats once when we used them instead of Hay Barley...

So fertilizer is???? Manure?

Here is a question that I have been wondering and the fert people won't tell me... What is the best way to figure Nitro deposited by cattle run on a field? I'm just trying to figure how much nitro we need to put on a field that had cattle running on it al winter... I keep thinking it can't be much but I am getting resitanc from other folks.
 
Alberta ag did a study on Nitrogen from feeding on fields, they came in about 50 pounds of actual N per acre.

I use manure on the field that I got 42 bushels on, but I have been learning more about the effects of raw or merely aged manure on land vs true compost.

I used to think my manure was composted, but I don't turn it enough and I am thinking it might be anerobic instead of aerobic.

Manure, even if aged, can be hard on microbes necessary to convert it to plant available form.

The seed treat I use is a mixture of seaweed and fish fertilizer. It won't burn the seed and is available all season. It seems to generate a beneficial area around the plant root that allows microbes to thrive. The science says bacteria and fungus in the right amounts will generate all the nutrients a crop needs. That is a 10 second overview of pages of biology. I am still experimenting, but I like the reduced risk.

Some systems use a 3 year strategy reducing fertilizer each year until no chemical fertilizer is applied, but I was dried out in 2003 with fertilizer and went cold turkey after that. I am looking at plow downs as an alternative if this doesn't sustain a reasonable yield, but at $8 inputs and $3.50 barley.... you do the math.
 
There is a local company.. Called me once about something unrelated to this, agrienergy maybe.. Been menaing to have them out here.. Do a lot of biodynamic farming (I think that is the same thing you are doing).. Might be worth a few hours talking to them.. Never to late or to early to learn.. With Nitro being at 40 bucks an acre right now I wouldn't mind dropping that a bit.. Have the potash almost figured out and most of the other nutrients (Want to "fix" a phospate problem, feed ethanol byproducts :shock: ..

You still have fixed costs that aren't in your equation but they would be there with 50 dollars an acre in inputs the same as 8 dollars an acre inputs so yes, that math looks good. .. We did buckwheat plowdown one year for the wife's garden.. It did wonders for the soil... Just wonders...

Yes, Compost is much better than just aged manure.. They are doing some things around here with getting large scale digesters on farms to compost hog manure and dairy waste.. Don't know how much progess they are making but they NRCS boys talked to me about it 2 years ago.. Just didn't have the money to do it... Sounded like a great system to really build soil fertillty.. You can compost just about anything (Surprised the hog farms aren't jumping all over this).
 
Methane manure digesters should become more viable if ethanol gets going. One will push the next.

Manure that is composted for methane production will yield a top quality compost that will do wonders for the soil.

One thing about compost or biologicals, is they build the soil so are not a 1 year fix like chemical fertilizer is.

It is an exciting area to investigate, but like everything else you have to stay in business while investigating and changing over.
 
MO STOCKER said:
RR, I know you're close to a lot of poultry facilaties, do you use litter? We are 80 miles north of Springfield and we have it trucked in here. Even with the freight we think it is a better deal than commercial.
Click to expand...
I like litter but it's something I've never had a good line on. Most of the chicken farmers here have theirs sold. Is yours coming out of OK? They get it free some places out west of here close to OK or in Ok and all they have in it is the trucking. It's a good fertilize if it's mostly manuer and old bedding.
 

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