WeedRead: When the Going Gets Tough—Making Every Fertilizer Dollar Count
When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. That’s what grandpa always said. Well, times are tough in the fertilizer markets. Prices are going up, tariffs are on the table, and supply is limited. On top of that, the U.S. beef cattle inventory is at its lowest point since the 1950s. While that’s good for cattle prices, it’s not great for forage producers.
I was standing in an alfalfa pivot last spring with a grower, looking over the fence at his neighbor’s hay field. He told me that the neighbor had been bragging about how he got a half a ton per acre more yield on that side of the fence because he put down dry fertilizer, then hit it with liquid a couple of weeks before the first cutting, and then again before the second cutting. The grower recalled, “I told him, well, you keep buying fertilizer, and I’ll just buy that extra hay. We’ll see who comes out better!”
That made me think that, depending on the markets, either one of them could come out on top.
What if you came out even every year? There’s a simple way to make that happen. Did grandpa ever tell you to hedge your bets? Or should you not carry all your eggs in one basket? I bet he did. If you mitigate risks with your fertilizer and soil, you’re hedging your bets against high fertilizer prices, high hay prices, supply constraints, and the biggest monkey wrench god throws at us all…weather. At Rocky Mountain Supply, our sales agronomists can help you hedge your bets in the field. This could be adjusting a fertilizer blend when one product gets really expensive, protecting the fertilizer by using one of our products designed specifically to maximize plant use efficiency, or simply using a product on your field that unleashes the potential of your soil.
We stock several options at our fertilizer plants that can be tailored to your specific field and/or operation to maximize your plant nutrition dollars. So, instead of just throwing on the same old N-P-K blend that always worked for grandpa, maybe it’s time to cut back on the ammonium sulfate and instead throw on a little humic acid if that’s what the field calls for. Or maybe this is the year that you spend $2.50/ac on Contain urea nitrogen stabilizer so that you can actually get all 80 units of N into those plants. Or…maybe it’s time to see what’s already in the soil that isn’t getting used by the plants and figure out what is needed to unlock that asset that you already have. The bottom line is that
we’re here to help you figure that out, and even though the going might be tough this spring, it’s time that we get going on playing the hand we’re delt! That’s what grandpa did!
