A potato agronomist with the Canada-Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre says, with the price of commercial fertilizers continuing to rise, there’s an opportunity to recycle manure nutrients in a way that will benefit both livestock producers and crop producers.
Soil management, nutrient management and fertilizer management issues will be the focus of the 2nd annual Soil and Manure Management Field Clinic set for tomorrow at the Canada-Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre at Portage la Prairie.
Curtis Cavers, a potato agronomist with the centre, says over time people have become more aware of the properties of the soil and how different nutrients can impact different soils in different ways under different moisture conditions.
If everything’s done right everyone benefits.
With the price of commercial fertilizer, the manufactured fertilizer going higher and higher all the time and certainly some of our phosphorus reserves world wide being depleted there is an opportunity to recycle nutrients from livestock operations and to do it in a manner, in such a way that is beneficial not only to livestock producers making best use of this fertilizer but to crop producers who may be looking for alternative supplies of fertilizer.
If it’s applied properly so that it meets the target applications and not over-applied, not under-applied people see the value in that manure, in that nutrient source and then hopefully that creates demand for it.
Once you have demand for a product it’s going to treated with value and if it’s done that way over applications and miss applications should become very minimal.
Cavers observes our knowledge of how to manage nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, has improved over the years and there’s a growing recognition of the value of applying the right source, at the right rate, at the right placement, at the right time to meet the needs of the crops.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
