A researcher with Niverville, Manitoba based Agra-Gold Consulting says farmers who use manure to fertilizer their crops can apply some of the techniques associated with variable rate application.
A study conducted by Agra-Gold Consulting & Farmer’s Edge Precision Consulting found further advances in manure application equipment will be needed before techniques used to vary the rate of commercial fertilizer applied throughout a field can be fully effective when applying manure.
Project leader Scott Dick says farmers are receptive to the idea of precision fertilizer application but the challenge with manure is that the ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen is fixed and the concentration of nutrients tends to vary throughout the pump-out.
Farmers can still use variable rate with manure but what we would suggest is that they go out and apply a base rate of manure, let’s say 80 pounds of nitrogen across the whole field and then come back with a variable rate starter blend of fertilizer and so the farmer can then still realize all the benefits of variable rate while still using manure.
In this study we used satellite imagery to determine different zones but more even practically let’s say on a quarter section with a drag line applicator they cut that field into 40 acre quadrants.
Rather than going to the extent of smaller zones all throughout the field we could just basically take that quarter section and break it into four 40 acre fields and manage those four fields separately.
I think that’s maybe one of the take-homes and maybe one of the mid-term steps that we can use in managing nutrient status.
Dick says adapting variable rate techniques to manure application appears to have good potential and he’s confident there will be more interest as manure application equipment becomes more refined.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
