Does soil testing make a difference?

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

When I go visit a farmer/landowner to do soil sampling as a service of my employer in hopes of selling some fertilizer I ask lots of question before I ever start. What is the crop history/crop future of the field? For example if it was and will continue to be in a low dollar crop(grass/legume pasture or hay) then a test for micronutrients may not be needed. But if the field was or will be in silage or tobacco then lots of "juice" will be needed. Was any fertilizer or lime added recently? Was a soil test taken recently? What are the customers expectations? 250 bushel corn or 150? 40 bushel beans or 75? Multiple applications or just one? Most times a "field" will be singular and fertilized as one so you need a "average" of the field. I do this by taking a sample or core ar every "terrain feature change". Take a few in the bottoms a few on hill sides(all of them) and a few on the hill tops, put them all in a bucket and mix or average them and put a ample in a box or bag. If you have more hillsides than bottoms then the samples should reflect that. Don't get caught up to much in the acreage because the test results will give you pounds of nutrients(not material) per acre. It will also give you a pH value. Try to take samples 4-6 inches deep, most of the nutrients and roots are in this area. Also try to take the samples the same time each year(month) so you can compare apples and apples. So back to the question, Does soil sampling pay? In my location Urea is $525 a ton, DAP is $580 and Potash is $440. More later if you like.

 

[smstonypoint]

When I go visit a farmer/landowner to do soil sampling as a service of my employer in hopes of selling some fertilizer I ask lots of question before I ever start.

Are any farmers in your area using variable fertilizer application rates?

Steve

 

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

Yes, thats a large part of my job. We have "grided" about 3000 acres so far with another 1000 or so pending. Cost is about $7 per acre. We use a Viper controller in a Rogator machine with a twin compartment bed. We have also set up a lime truck with VRT. How familiar are you with VRT?

 

[smstonypoint]

How familiar are you with VRT?

I know next to nothing about the technical aspects of VRT, but I had a nodding acquaintance with the literature on the economics of precision ag. before I retired back in 2007.

As I recall, the ROI didn't look that great at that time with relatively low crop prices and relatively high costs of the technology. Am I correct in thinking that the real cost of the technology has decreased and its capabilities have increased over time?

Steve

 

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

The R7 biomass satellite imagery from the Winfield Solutions Company coupled with John Deeres(and others) Greenstar Yield Monitor from the combine gives you a pretty amazing inside look at your fields. Like I said the "griding" costs $7 per acre and the spreading with our VRT machine is $7 per acre. (Consider that spreading with our older "spinner" truck is $6 a acre) It wouldn't take much of putting fertilizer in the right place instead of the wrong place to equal $14 per acre. Lets just say you have 100 acres you'd like to try. I'll come out with my "gadgets" and a GPS/satellite mark/trace the boundary of your field, the program will then generate "target points" randomly for your field on 2.5 acre grids. I will take samples at each of these target points as individual samples. A couple days after I submit the samples I'll get the results. With the fields crop history and your yield projections I can load a "fertilizer prescription" into a flash drive/thumb drive that is plugged into the Viper on the Rogator. The two bins on the Rogator are loaded, one with DAP and the other with potash and as the machine moves across the field the correct analysis of fertilizer is blended and spread on the correct grid. If the machine is in the wrong field it wont come on. Or if the machine goes outside the field boundary the bed will shut off, like if you cross a waterway. Parts of the that needs more getts more and what needs less gets less. Try that with an old fertilizer buggy. We can talk more if you need to.....I like it.