Brian Triplett: Ag Biz

If you own cows, bale hay, or know people who do either, you have likely heard them talking a lot lately about just how high fertilizer prices have become. Based on increased demand for fertilizer in the United States and abroad and high energy prices, which affect the costs of manufacturing and distribution, these high prices may be here to stay for a while.

Just how high are people talking? Local prices for the most common pasture nitrogen sources last week or so were running 65 cents to 74 cents per pound. Five years ago, nitrogen was averaging 26 cents to 38 cents per pound. That's anywhere from a 95 percent to a 150 percent increase in fertilizer cost over the past five years.

These increases of around 35 cents a pound hit home when you multiply them by a factor of 100, which is the typical recommendation rate in pounds of nitrogen per acre, per cutting, for hay fields. That means folks can expect to spend $65 to $74 or more per acre for just the nitrogen needed on one acre of land this summer to produce a hay crop at the old standard expected yield rate of 2 tons of grass per acre. For people grazing livestock, typical application rates would be in the $33- to $37-per-acre range once or twice a summer.

We focus more on the price of nitrogen because it has traditionally been the most expensive nutrient of the major three (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) in the fertilizer blend. However, the price of phosphorous in fertilizer blends has climbed into the 50-cent-per-pound range and is starting to influence the price of fertilizer blends as well.

So, over the course of the next few weeks, I plan to revisit the topic of high fertilizer prices several times and how pasture/hay producers can maximize the return on their fertilizer dollar and/or minimize production input costs.

The first step, and we have talked about this one many times before, is to take soil tests on your pastures/hay fields on an annual basis. I liken a soil test report to an annual "bank statement" report on your soils. If you have been fertilizing regularly over the years, especially with fertilizer blends, it is likely that you have been depositing some nutrients into the soil in larger amounts than you have been withdrawing them through your plants. For example, you might have enough phosphorous in the soil to get you through this grazing season, or at the least a few hay cuttings. We can't be sure of this, of course, if we don't soil test and then fertilize accordingly.

Soil testing takes time to do correctly. However, if you can skip applying about 10 pounds of phosphorous per acre ($5 in today's example), you can more than pay for the soil test, your time and postage ($15) that it would take to give you an accurate assessment of the nutrient balance in your soil (especially when you consider that one soil test can be used to estimate the nutrients in up to about 40 acres of land).

So before you fertilize this spring, go dig a few small holes in the pasture.

Texas A&M University in College Station and Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches have soil testing labs, and there are some private labs in the state as well where you can send your soil for testing. Turnaround time with the state university labs can run up to around three weeks, especially in the spring, so get to digging.

Sample forms for Texas A&M's lab can be downloaded from http://soiltesting.tamu.edu or from your local county Extension office, where you can also obtain soil bags.

A few pointers. Only dig about 6 inches into the soil when taking a sample. Take at least 10-15 samples from the area being testing, put into a clean paper sack or bucket, mix thoroughly and use this mixed sample to fill the soil bag. Repeat this process for each field you want tested. Mail it in with your payment. Then go do something else while you are waiting for your results.

Brian Triplett is the Smith County Extension agent for agriculture and natural resources. He can be reached at 903-590-2980 or via e-mail at b-triplett@tamu.edu or on the Web at http://smith-tx.tamu.edu.

Brian Triplett
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