Spraying

[mhartman]

My job over 25 years in agriculture has been to find / generate evidence of beneficial practices, and then promote them for adoption, or discourage practices with proven lack of benefit / lack of evidence.

I do not sell anything - no product or service -- so my only interest is improving the economics for farmers and the quality of our soil resource.

Examples over the years I have been involved with generating research and large scale farm replicated trials: deep banding N fertilizer versus broadcast-incorporation; copper fertilizer for cereals on peatland; direct seeding/zero tillage. I do remember how many farmers and some researchers were quite negative about direct seeding in the early days...
I also remember the snake oils like AgriSpon, Nitrozyme. I also remember some things that looked good initially but then were not consistent enough such as fall dormant seeding of canola. Debunking false claims about products / practices can make farmers more money by cutting unnecessary expenses.

My experiences have taught me to be open to new ideas, but before promoting them as a farm practice to be adopted, there has to be several carefully conducted research studies to show me the data!!!

[mhartman]

Fertilizer practices for canola in Europe, China, India etc are not broadly applicable to the situation here in western Canada. Their soils have been farmed for several millenia and are quite deficient in most macro and micro-nutrients. Their higher moisture and longer crop growth seasons causes higher nutrient losses, so split applications help to minimize this. They also grow true winter types in Europe, and semi-winter types in China, India. When I was there at the International ****seed Congress a year and half ago, I was amazed to find that in some of the best ****seed areas in China, the ****seed crop is one of three crops grown in one year!

So many of these areas do get response to in-crop applications of N (foliar or surface applications) and micronutrients (foliar). In Europe they are struggling now with regulations that prohibit more than 60 lb N /acre residual in the soil after harvest. This is impacting some of their late season applications.


For those interested, here is an overview of macro-nutrient fertilizer practices in Europe -- I wouldn't want to pay their fertilizer bills...

Fertilizer recommendations
N -
• Winter application can be advised only if: either there is a low N balance in the soil at sowing, in which case 30-50 kg/ha N may be applied, or sowing has been delayed and
there is a need to stimulate growth in order to reach the optimum stage (8 leaves) for frost resistance, in which case 30-40 kg/ha N may be given.
• Spring application: the total requirement is about 200 kg/ha N, best divided into 2 applications, the first (50-70 % of the total) at the onset of regrowth (which, in France, could be at the end of January), and the second (30-50 % of the total) 2-3 weeks later.
Where a high yield is expected, a third application, of 20-30 kg/ha N, may be worth giving about 10 days before the flowers are likely to be in full bloom.
• N is best applied as ammonium nitrate or in a solution containing 26-30 % N, but care must be taken when using fertilizer materials containing sulphur (see below).
P -
• Where soil pH is between 5.5 and 7.5, 60 kg/ha P2O5; or;
on calcareous soils with pH >7.5, 70- 90 kg/ha P2O5; or,
on acid soils with pH <5.5, 140-160 kg/ha P2O5.
K -
• On soils with high K availability, 60- 80 kg/ha K2O; or,
on soils with medium K availability, 120-150 kg/ha K2O; or,
on soils with poor K availability, 200-250 kg/ha K2O.
S -
• This element is very important; on the one hand it increases yield (in France 75 kg/ha SO3 in spring resulted in 8 cases out of 10 in an increase of 340 kg/ha in yield), but on the
other hand it can increase the glucosinolate content of the harvested seeds. The best results, in increasing yield while maintaining quality, are to be expected from an application of 70-80 kg/ha SO3 with the second application of N in spring.
Further reading
MERRIEN, A.; PALLEAU, J.P.; MAISONNEUVE, C.: Mineral requirements of ****seed cultivated
in France. Info. Tech. CETIOM N° 103, 34-46, France (1988)

[mhartman]

I don't want to dominate this thread since I am moderator, but one very recent and interesting factsheet on managing oilseed ****seed canopies and nitrogen fertilizer from England. The final report is >200 pages...
http://www.hgca.com/content.search/4/4/Site%20Search/Site%20Search/Redirect.mspx?fn=redirect&pubId=5705&scope=search& langOptions=1

[ado089]

I think it was the 2006 agronomy update in Red Deer that had some great local research presented on in-crop fert application. Mostly focused on top-dressing on protein and yield response in wheat. I'm not sure where to track that down anymore though.

[AG_guy]

i consulted on that exact same thing back when i was with Opti-Crop.

[AG_guy]

Do you realize what kind of weather they have there ? I have a friend from england and one from ireland. They can grow over 200 bushel winter wheat. I know some people who do top dressing 28-0-0 on canola as research.

[AG_guy]

I guess what we need is a farmer to give us 160 acres then we can have 80 acres each. I'll consult on 80 and hartman you can take the other 80. The side that gives a larger profit wins. Hey we could call this King of the Crop contest. It's easy to talk but what counts is the dollars in the bank at the end and leaving the land in better shape then when we started.

So if any farmer is up for it I am !!!

hartman ??????

[mhartman]

Sorry, I'm not interested in being a crop king or defending my reputation etc. But I am interested in generating more data on this topic in canola. Single strip or split field comparisons are not rigorous enough unless they are done at 20 sites or so. Many fields have large yield differences within fields so how do you split the field to be equi-yield? Well-designed research trials would be more meaningful to me and to other fertility researchers such as Dr. Karamanos. See his article "Foliar fertilization fallacies" in the Feb 2008 issue of Top Crop Manager -
http://www.topcropmanager.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1268&Ite mid=182

I envision something like 5 treatments with equivalent nutrient rates:
1. Traditional soil applied macro-nutrients
2. Soil macros foliar micros
3. Post seeding top dressed macros as same timings / rates as 5.
4. Post seeding top dressed macros foliar micros at same timings as in 5.
5. Foliar fertilization (macro micros) only

I could bring this to the steering committee of the Prairie Canola Agronomic Research Program and if both the farmer and scientists are interested, this trial could be conducted at the Ag Canada sites in western Canada.

[AG_guy]

when would the results be avaibable 5 years maybe 10. Sometimes the answer isn't in a report it's in the bank at the end of the year.

[AG_guy]

I was down in lethbridge a few years ago at conference and a soil guy from ag canada was there just slamming foliars. He made an ass out of himself because he didn't make no sense in what he was talking about. Although he likely spent all life ignoring foliars so if he agrres with them now then his lifes work would have been for nothing. Why don't the government give money to the farmer for on filed research. I would rather see the money go there then to some high paid govenment workers. They do alot of great work but is ALL there work published to us ? And how much does it cost to pay everyone and to run the sites? And how much does the farmer really get out of it. if you don;t have a univesity eductaion you can't even get hired by ag canada i guess if you didn't go to university you can't grow a crop. I truly belive we have gone to far and we need to take a step backwards in agriculture.

quote " Only the earth is subject to the will of man, to conserve or destroy according to his knowledge or ignorance"