SOS by Christine Jones

[Hopalong]

Have had personal experience with sulfur deficiency in canola.
Worst visual effected areas were well drained upland and fairly recently broken bush land.
Adequate sulfur fertilizer is a no brainer for us with canola.
Think sulfur reference to falling from sky is reference to air pollution and acid rain.

[Louee]

Tweety, you and grassfarmer are both right. High organic matter soils such as likely "Grass" farmers have all the sulphur needed. Low OM soils, not so much. Alfalfa and canola,mustards will need sulphur added on deficient soils. Use of Elemental Sulphur and gypsum is allowed under organic standards, If you're short of it and your crop needs it then you are encouraged to use it. It is sulphur in salt fertilizer form that is not allowed.

[grassfarmer]

The answer is simple tweety and was the point of this thread. Plants derive their sulphur needs from organic matter. So create organic matter at rates modern agriculture has never done before. Something these bright people are figuring out a way to do….. or keep buying it at the store if you prefer.

I think we are at a revolutionary point in beginning to understand soils. Was reading yesterday in "agadvance" magazine of soil test research proving that available Phosphorus levels naturally increased 50% on one plot during the growing season compared to a control. Hypothesis is that healthy plants with certain bacteria types around their roots can fix P.

But I guess you will say we can only buy phosphate at the store too?
Do you have a store tweety? - a fertiliser store?

[greybeard]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNTTJ4N3kIE
First one that came up on Google.
You for sure need sulfur in some situations. You buy it like insurance.
I'm not a soccer mom. I've seen more than a few actual sulfur deficiencies, including some of the ones used in the reference shots.
If you think you can replace all the nutrient a crop removes and make a profit, good times and bad, have at it.
But I suspect you are not spending your own money.

[tweety]

While i appreciate the sulfur cycle, do you realize how much sulfur in the air you would need to replace the 30 pounds per acre minimum removed in one year alone from a canola crop? you would be unable to breath the air. Last time i checked, no volcanoes in the area either.

Regarding bacteria to extract even more phosphate beyond equilibrium in an acidic zone, keyword acidic zone, why yes you can. But its coming from the soil still, still mining, still just stealing. Even more so, when you go and buy and add phosphate, guess where the majority goes? To balance the soil you just extracted. Pay once for the JumpStart, pay a second time for the phosphate to replace what you extracted, pay again to fertilize your crop.

Its chemistry, it never ever lies.

Organic matter. Yes we can build organic matter quickly. Absolutely. Even quicker if we add lots of additional nutrients or start with nice fertile soil from which there is a bounty to steal from (which ironically is where most of these 'projects' take place). But if you don't add additional nutrients, you once again are just effectively removing from the soil mortgaging it away from the next generation.

BTW, fertilizer, to a point, provides a net $ gain. So i'm using not my own money, you are correct, i'm using the profits from the previous year to pay for it.

You have not in any way yet explained how this dumbass who buys nutrients can produce his own and not just steal or mine them.

I would love to know how and where you are producing sulfur if not from the local fertilizer dealer or simply taking it away from the soil bank. Don't be afraid to use big words either, i can handle them.

[tweety]

Well, good thing i didn't cancel my fertilizer prebuy. Nothing to gleam here.

[ColevilleH2S]

Tweety there is nothing to learn because there is nothing to teach. There is no way to replace removal rates of Sulphur, Phosphorus, Potassium, Boron, Zinc, Iron, Chloride, Magnesium, Manganese and Copper on a grain cropping farm without adding them as fertilizer of some sort. Especially since sulphur dioxide emissions regulations have been working their magic.

We are in the soil mining business, consumers need food nutrients and those nutrients ultimately come from our soils via the crops we sell. Eventually those soil nutrients have to be replaced, it is just a matter of when.

Until urban sewage plants devise a way to scrub and concentrate these flushed nutrients so they can be placed back on the land they came from, we have a broken system. No amount of wishful thinking about organic matter and healthy soil will fix it, that is just a short term band-aid. The piper will have to be paid, eventually.