The Principal with Agra-Gold Consulting says new technology on the horizon that will provide on the go testing of the nutrients contained in manure will allow applicators to be much more prescriptive in their manure fertilizer applications.
New developments such as auto steer and mapping technology have improved the accuracy of liquid manure fertilizer application.
Agra-Gold Consulting Principal Scott Dick, who was named as one of two 2016 Manitoba Pork Pork Industry Award winners last month, says he has always been a strong believer that manure is more valuable than regular synthetic fertilizer because there’s a lot more to manure that help improve the soil health.
The product that we add back into the soil helps build organic matter in the soil so there’s a lot of properties of the soil that improve simply by applying manure that you don’t get with synthetic commercial fertilizer along with, there’s a lot of micronutrients and things like that that aid the crop that a farmers wouldn’t necessarily put on and so those are also helping in the yield and the quality of the crop.
One of the things that I see on the horizon is on the go testing of the nutrients in the manure.
Right now we take samples and they get sent off to the lab so we will have numbers after, post application.
But there is technologies in Europe that are starting to be commercialized that actually put sensors or a sensor right on the application tractor and will tell us, as we’re applying, what is the nutrient strength, how many pounds of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium is in that manure as we’re applying and so we can become much more prescriptive in hitting our nutrients targets and ensuring that the farmers gets exactly the right amount of pounds on his field. ~ Scott Dick-Agra – Gold Consulting
Dick says we are also seeing advanced treatments that work very well in separating the nitrogen and phosphorus contained in manure which will allow producers to be much more targeted in the application of those compounds.
