The Agronomists, Ep 227: Interpreting soil test results with Tryston Beyrer and Jack Legg

Excite your crops with inputs from ExciteBio. Technologies, a Canadian company providing made in Canada inoculants and biologicals. Since 2010, they've been helping farmers harness the power of the soil. Let us help you find the best. Solution and access nitrogen and phosphorus with. ExciteBio's lineup of inoculants and Ag biologicals. Reach us at 1-855-X-I T E B I O or at ExciteBio CA. Thank you to our show sponsors, the Canola School, Ruminating with RealAg and MMP. With deep roots in agriculture, MMP's Farm Management Consulting team helps farm businesses make confident decisions for long term success. From strategic planning to operational growth, MMP advisors guide farms through challenges and opportunities. Connect with MMP today to build a stronger future. Learn more at MMP ca. Hello all and welcome to the Agronomist. I am your host, Lindsay Smith. Yeah, I am a few minutes late, Pete. I apologise. But you know what, it's okay because some people are digging out from like my colleague Burn, who's in the chat from 30, 60, 70 centimetres of snow over the past few days. And for tonight's chat, one of our guests is actually running just a little bit behind because they were travelling today and travel is still a mess before of course, we get to tonight's conversation. A quick reminder, if you do collect those CEU credits, head on over to RealAgriculture.com agronomists let us know you took in the show and we'll get you lined up for those. Great to see Everybody joining us. YouTube, a reminder. We're also on LinkedIn, X, Facebook and of course realagriculture.com agronomous or slash live. So many places to find the agronomists. All right, tonight's topic one I'm super excited to delve into. We are going to talk about interpreting soil test results. So now is your chance. Get those questions, get those quiz queries in early so that we can answer your questions throughout our conversation. Let's bring in at least one of our guests while we wait for a second. Although who knows, maybe he got here. No. Okay, we're still waiting. He's somewhere clearing customs and that's okay. But Jack leg is here. Jack, how are you? I'm well, Lindsey. Thanks for the invite. A pleasure to be here and it'll be, it'd be good to share my perspective from the lab point of view on soil testing. Well, and this is, and thanks for saying yes because of course we do often look at it from, you know, we have soil scientists that come on, we have agronomists that speak here, we have, you know, researchers sharing things, but we don't always get necessarily to look from the lab perspective. So I'm excited to sort of unpack some of these things. What you see from your end, and that's maybe where I want to start, is, you know, maybe let the audience know, sort of your experience in the, in the testing side of things and delve into just what is a soil test and what it is not. Potentially. Sure I can, I can elaborate on that. So my experience, I started out of university as a soil sampler back in the mid-90s when GPS was brand new. It was still essentially aircraft navigation at the time and DOS based mapping programmes. And we've come a long way since then. But over the years I, you know, achieved my certified crop advisor advisor status, became the staff agronomist at the lab and I managed the lab business for some time and now I'm in business development with the laboratory and still, I still oversee all those soil tests. So most of the reports that go through the lab, I approve. I look at the day, the data and validate it. And that gives me a bit of a unique perspective that I am looking at tens of thousands of soil tests a year. So your question, what is a soil test? I think sometimes the word test conveys that it's a universal method that everybody uses and we're measuring an exact quantity and that's not the case at all. The trick with soil testing is because soils are different by region. You know, depth, acidity, all these different things that influence the soil, even climatic conditions and everything else that goes into that soil means that what we're trying to do is not measure the total amount because there's hundreds to thousands of pounds of macronutrients in every acre. But the trick is to find a method to measure that small portion, a very small portion of soluble nutrient, which plant available nutrient. And that's why there's different methods from one locale to the next. So Quebec, for example, uses the Malik 3 method. And Eastern Canada, the Maritimes would as well. Here in Ontario, we're very calcareous, so is Manitoba. So we use the same methods under our accreditation system. And MAFRE in Manitoba and Western Canada tends to be calcareous and high PH as well, lots of bicarbonates. So we use the Olsen phosphorus, for example, instead of MALIK in Quebec. And then I'm sure when Tristan gets on, he might talk about Bray Phosphorus because there's regions in the Midwest that would use that. So I think it's a good idea to elaborate on the test methodology so that folks understand that there is different tests depending where you're at. Now, I think one of the things that comes up from that exact point is there's still, I think, at times a challenge in interpreting what a soil test tells you and, and if potentially everything that you can test for is actually plant available, like, is that the gold standard that we're trying to hit and are we there? Yeah. So to elaborate on that, Lindsay, what we're measuring really isn't a quantity, even though we're reporting in parts per million, or some folks would report in pounds per acre. So, for example, 10 ppm phosphorus, which is about 20 pounds per acre, doesn't really mean that there's 20 pounds in a bucket sitting there ready to be used. What the soil test is really doing is giving an indication of how well that soil can provide nutrient to the soil solution. Now, that number itself is somewhat meaningless because until we take that number and compare it to, or calibrate it to field trials to see what the response is, we don't know whether a 10 is low or high until we see what crop response is to different rates of fertiliser. Now, where we have accredited programmes and provincial recommendations, that work has occurred. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's exact for every farm. So it's also good for growers to try their own rates, you know, go full rate, half rate, zero, to get a comparison on what the maximum economic yield is based on your different fertiliser rates on your farm. Because agronomy is quite local. Now, Pete Wheat. Pete is in the comments, as per usual, and we appreciate it very much because he would like further clarification as to why Quebec, the Maritimes look at aluminium for p tie up. Why don't we in Ontario or other areas. Sure, that's. That's a good question. And it's partly due to their soil types. So Quebec and East are. They tend to be low ph, they're acidic soils. Aluminium does tie up phosphorus, but really it only does so at very low ph, so less than 5. And if you're at less than 5 ph anyways, then it's a good idea to add lime to increase your ph, to make all your other nutrients more available. So those that do Malik testing, the. The extractant for aluminium is malic, so it does make sense to. To look at aluminium in those cases. But really, and especially with the olson Test, what we're doing is we're measuring the plant available portion. If it's tied up, it's tied up. It's not reflected in the test. Okay. Now, there's also a question that comes up, is, and maybe some people are trying to do a gotcha moment, but if I have two soil samples and I send them to two labs, should I get the same results back? Do I always get the same results back? What can I learn, maybe, about sending them to two different labs? Yeah, that's a good question. And we do get that question on occasion. So I'll give you a lot of answers, actually. First of all, is that two different samples from the same sample, are they actually the same? You know, two handfuls out of the same bucket doesn't mean that the results will be the same necessarily. In fact, at the lab where we do proficiency tests and we move samples around to many labs, we dry them, we grind them almost to a powder, and then you can split that. There's a bit of a splitter instrument that makes sure that it's an exact split. So that's the first thing I would say. Secondarily, what is the difference? If you're looking at a 9, phosphorus versus an 11, it's really not that different. And, hey, there's Tristan. There we go. Sorry, I'll carry on. Yeah, you carry on, and then we'll bring Tristan. Yeah, perfect. So the difference might not be that variable because really, a 9, 11, it's a low test. And if it's low, it's low, which means it's responsive to add more. And then the other thing to keep in mind, like we touched on earlier, is maybe the methodology is different. So two different labs might be running completely different procedures. Abre. We often say a Bray at 26 parts per million is equivalent to a 20. Olson. But they're really not that. It's not that linear of a relationship to make those assessments. So sometimes we test the same soil twice. Bray and Olson. And they're the same sometimes. Usually, Bray is higher, but often Bray can be lower sometimes. So there's no way of calibrating one to the next. All right, you are here. Do we have sound? I can hear you guys. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you for braving the cold and the snow and air travel right now and still saying yes to joining us here. So why don't you tell us a bit about your role with Mosaic and. And what it is you. What it is you do before you come to Saskatchewan, of course. Thank you, Lindsay. Thanks Jack, for having me. So, yes, I'm Tristan Byer. I'm an agronomist for Mosaic. I focus on our crop nutrition and our biosciences product. So basically what I entail is I cover, I hail from Wisconsin, so don't hold that against me for being in the southern part of some of your guys listening area. But I farm from there. But then with my role within Mosaic, I had the opportunity to get out and do a lot of trainings with our customers with retailers across the countryside and I say across the country, historically it's been western North America, from Texas all the way up into Canada and, and that brings me up here again again today. So travel was good. I'm looking forward to, to being with, with my, with my team and I like kind of being, being able to have the opportunity to talk about crop nutrition, the importance of fertility and kind of like being the liaison between what's happening deep in our product development type pipeline within Mosaic, but also what's happening in the field with our customers and growers. So yeah, so thank you for that. And that is one of the things we definitely want to touch on is, you know, everyone's like, oh yes, of course we fertilise. Yes, that's fine, okay, how much. But we have seen and one of, one of the key things that the two of you both sort of hit on in preparing for this whole show is actually taking a look at what our soil testing results, what our actual sort of field level nutrients are actually doing as, on average or as a trend. And we've got some data from, yes, Ontario, but even points much further with Tristan's data to look at, at some of that. And so maybe let's just start there. Tristan, with, with what are you seeing as far as trends? We can focus on whichever nutrients, but usually it's phosphorus and potassium. I think that we talk about sort of overall, are we drawing down over time, are we maintaining, where are we at as far as the trend line anyway? Excellent question. So it really varies a little bit depending on the provinces as well as what nutrient we're focused on. So if I speak to phosphorus specifically to start with, you know, there's different labs like that of Jackson have, have helped compile some of the data that goes into one of the surveys that the Fertiliser Institute puts out every five years and we're actually due for another one in the next coming months, which will be exciting to see what that trend line has done versus has it changed or has there been any improvements or as we might call out, is there any concerns of some areas that are maybe progressively getting worse over time? So when we look at phosphorus specifically, on average across North America, about almost half of the soils have been coming back is considered deficient. And when I say deficient, a lot of times those deficiencies will vary depending on the individual states or provinces based on what their critical level is. And Jack just got done explaining that, whether it's Bray or Olson, you know, parts per million that we're looking at. But when, if, I think the common theme is that if there's a deficiency identified, that's a known opportunity that we can correct deficiencies that are occurring. And those are scenarios that are likely limiting yield in some way. And especially when, you know, commodity prices, crop prices are compressed, it's, it's not something we want to leave a yield on the table when, you know, every bushel counts. Now, Jack, and actually I, I think we've got some slides we can go to, to look at some of the, the data on this. So we have producer Chase tonight, which is very exciting. Producer Chase, can we go to Jack, slide one? I believe we're going to look at phosphorus and at potassium. Jack, walk me through this. What are we seeing? What is this trend? Sure, so this is all of our data at our laboratory. So it's predominantly Ontario, but what we did was we pulled out the Ontario data every seven years going back to 2003. So you can see each of these is a seven year interval. What it is is the percent of samples that are testing within a soil test range. So on the far Left is less than 7 ppm. And you can see that the number or the percentage of samples testing low is increasing over time. On the far right, the percentage of samples testing high is decreasing. So that may be not a bad thing necessarily. And part of that would be less high phosphorus crops, tobacco, tomatoes, things of that nature. But overall, with the critical value we would consider For Olson, around 20, you'd expect there to be a big bell shaped curve in the middle here. And really what's happening is fertility is trending down. I didn't add it up and put it on the slide, but it's about 40% of all of our samples are currently testing less than critical. And I'd also point out that's just the samples that we're testing, the farms that don't get sampled, the rented acres, things of that nature, where are they as far as phosphorus values? So we can skip to. Yeah, I was going to say let's look at, let's look at K as well and see if it trends the same. So that's the next slide producer chase. There we go. Okay. Different. Yeah, still we, we go back to 2003, we had no samples less than 45k. You know, we like to see it over 120. That's quite a lot that are testing down less than 60 even. But again it's almost 50% of all the samples coming through the lab in a given year are less than critical values. So that's a real opportunity for folks because that means you're probably yield limiting when you're less than those critical values, you're not optimising your yield. So let's leave this up for just a minute. Tristan, I want to go to you on, on looking at. Now this is for Ontario, but as you mentioned, these are trends that you're seeing, you know, in many other areas. Perhaps the absolute numbers are different. But Jack hits on something here of, you know, realistically, are we limiting yield potential at some of these levels? And the answer is likely yes. So what is your experience in sort of navigating some of where some of these soils end up as far as potassium and phosphorus and those critical levels? Yeah, so a lot of times I rely heavily on what the local recommendations are for that fertility critical level. So for example you're showing here potassium further east, some of the. I've seen a lot of recommendations say you should have 150ppm recommendation, but there's been some newer recommendations in certain geographies that have actually been elevating some of the critical levels. You know, I'll give an example we can show here in a little bit where some, some data west or university minutes, Minnesota to the south, they've increased some of their critical values for the high demand crops up to 200 ppm. And I think it just supports a couple of different things. When we have higher yielding crops that have higher nutrient demands, you have a limited area that those crops can exploit those nutrients basically that those that are coming from the roots and with some of the management practises, changes that we've had. I'll use an example of corn that might be more relevant out east to southern geography. But you know, as planting populations have increased, we have a smaller root area and that puts extra pressure and demand and making sure that we have adequate or sufficient soil fertility levels to raise not only that crop at adequate levels, but hopefully higher yielding or higher trendline crops with greater crop removal. Jason Vote out of Manitoba shares from Agris Labs South Central Manitoba p residuals under 15 ppm are anywhere from 37 to 52% of samples. So. Or, and, and lower. So realistic. So. Okay, I want to pause for a second though on this phosphorus question because potassium is I think is a bit of a different beast, especially as we go west and you know, it's maybe less of a concern, but in pockets is definitely a concern. But phosphorus is of course one of these ones that environmentally we don't want going here, there and everywhere and we don't want our levels to get too high because we don't necessarily want, you know, it, it moving or moving with soil particles, etc. So Jack, from that perspective, like do we just have a changing sort of idea of phosphorus or as far as we don't want to over apply or is it economics? And it's as you said, maybe we've got rented land, we've got other things that we want to do. What do you think's at play here when we talk about slowly drawing down these phosphorus numbers? Yeah, so I mentioned when I started my career three decades ago, the average phosphorus back then was around 40 for Ontario soil samples. So we've really come down a lot. You're right, it's an environmental threat to pollute with phosphorus. I think that society at large and government often thinks that farmers are polluting with phosphorus, but the numbers are showing that really we're putting on less than we're taking out. So I think there's a bit of an opportunity there. Now we obviously have to be responsible with additions broadcasting phosphorus before a rainstorm. That's, that's not a good idea obviously. So the four hour principles have to be at play. Anytime we get that phosphorus below the soil the better. And I noticed the comment there from Manitoba as well and I, I had the opportunity to be in a meeting with John Hurd several years ago now. But back then they were recognising that because of their, their seed or the phosphorus placement with the planter, they were knowingly mining their soils because they couldn't put it on enough with the planter. But they also didn't want to broadcast because there's so much water in Manitoba and they were afraid of any sort of phosphorus risk getting in the waterways. Tristan? Yeah, I would echo those comments exactly. Basically embracing the four R practises are important. You know, no farmer wants to apply fertiliser and have it leave their, their farm operation. And usually when we get the blame, say we use agriculture, it, it ends up from you See it from eutrophication or those algae blooms and other things. And there's two ingredients that come together. They're usually it's, it's nitrogen and phosphorus. But, but if managing nutrients is complex, you know, there's been a fair number of studies that shows that it's not just agriculture additions, it can be legacy nutrients, it can be natural reserve nutrients within the soil erosion, other practises that practises that can lead to that. I do think that many growers are doing a fairly good job of managing these nutrients. And especially with me covering a wide range of geography when I come to Canada specifically they, you know, they take in good merit that they should apply their nutrients using for our practises you see a lot of banding of phosphorus, especially when you go further west through air cedars and things like that trying to get into the soil instead of broadcast, you're doing spring applications right before the crop needs it. You're trying to match the crop crop rates where need be. Oftentimes I think we can review that as our yields change and our yield goals and removal and things like that. So there's, there's different things that relate to the four Rs right? Source Rate, time and place that influence those nutrient dynamics. Just to finish up on that is that you know, it makes perfect logical sense that our yields are growing more removal. So the numbers are coming down on, on soil test fertility. But it's also a bit paradoxical how are we getting bigger yields on lower fertility soils? And I think it's largely management better seed varieties, seed treatments, fungicide, you name it. You know, bigger equipment plants, more acres when soils are fit. We're not mudding in crops like we used to even not that long ago. So. But on the other hand it makes you wonder if fertility wasn't declining, where, where could yields be there? Okay, excellent point. I want to leave it there for just a moment. We are going to go to our second read of the night and come back to our conversation and maybe talk about some of. We've got some great questions in here about maybe some of the other interact happen in the soil as well to tie up nutrients. So producer Chase, if you would will go to our read. The Agronomist is brought to you by ruminating with relag, MMP and the Canola School. From preceding cedar setup and cheques to pest ID and advice on nutrient management decisions to tips on determining swath timing, RealAg's canola school covers every facet of the Canola growing season, the Canola School is made possible through sponsorship by BASF Canada and Invigor Hybrid Canola. Learn more@canolaschool.com. All right, now, I mean, we could do a whole show just on phosphorus and we do sometimes. And probably just on potassium. And we do sometimes that as well, of course, but we've got other things to talk about. We've got micronutrients to talk about. And that's maybe one of the ones I did want to ask about, because I do. I do recognise that, you know, in a year like this one, where margins may be tight, you know, micronutrients may fall down the priority list. As far as, you know, if you've only got so many input dollars, where are you going to put them? At the same time, when we've got a deficiency of any nutrient, it's going to cost yield. And some of them are relatively easy maybe to meet with small amounts if, you know, they're there. So, Tristan, maybe I'll go to you first on. And I think we've even got a slide on. On zinc as well. But some of the, you know, sneakier of the soil nutrients that maybe are in tight supply that might also be costing yield. Yeah. So when I look through different nutrients, a lot of times we focus on NP and K, because they're macro and large and the crops need a lot of nutrients of a lot of quantities of those. And we'll skip over secondary nutrients for the time being. But the sneakier ones might be those that are in smaller quantity. We oftentimes, we call them micronutrients or trace nutrients. And it's not that they're not any less important than those macronutrients, it's just that they're needing a smaller quantities, hence the term micros. So if you look at something like zinc, one of the reasons that it's really important for the crop is, you know, early germination, it helps with some seed energy, it has some very strong relationships with other nutrients like that of phosphorus. So we've oftentimes found that, you know, building the two nutrients together is really important because if you get an imbalance of one nutrient, it can induce the deficiency of another, just like that of phosphorus. Being a zinc is fairly immobile in the soil. We can routinely soil test for it. It's probably one of the more, I'll say, consistent or reliable soil tests from a micronutrient standpoint that we have. And there's. If you look at the soil test summaries across North America, there has been a Fair amount of deficiency occur. Probably about a third of the soils across the Canadian provinces are deficient in zinc. And I think it just speaks to like not just focusing all on one nutrient if it's P or K. But look, taking advantage of some of those other soil test metrics that we have and other micronutrients that we can look at, assessing to see if those are also deficient. One phrase that Mosaic likes to term is the term balanced crop nutrition. So it's not just applying one nutrient, we're applying nutrients in a balanced metric, making sure that multiple nutrients are addressed based on the crop uptake requirements or removal requirements. Now and producer Chase, I think we've got, I think it's slide three of Tristan. So that is on zinc. I do want to put this up just. And we'll, we'll go through it in a moment. But Jack, I want to go to you on. We, we do have a question as well and, and Tristan sort of brings it up that you know, a soil test obviously is going to look at specific nutrients and you can, you know, certain tests are going to be for certain nutrients, etc. But we talk, we open the show, we're talking about, you know, what a soil test is. We don't necessarily always get the full report of like what else in the soil could be, let's say tying something up, etc. So from your perspective, do we, how do we sort of bridge that gap of the, the balance of what's in your soil and what may be interacting. You mentioned ph is one of them. What are some of those things that we really need to be watching for as far as other minerals maybe in the soil that could be causing issues. Right. So a couple of things that, and I'll let Jack jump into this, this as well, but think, couple things that I think of is aside from balance of the different nutrients you're testing for, you might be looking at overabundance of, of some nutrients like, such as calcium. Calcium may tie up or bind some of these. But without going deep, you know, maybe Jack, you got a couple comments that you wanted to provide, thoughts you had along those lines. Sure. Well, I'd say that there are definitely some relationships where nutrients can be antagonistic. Potassium and magnesium are two. For example, that if you have potassium that's very high and low magnesium, you could get a potassium induced magnesium deficiency. The other one is phosphorous and zinc for example. Ph really is the major influence on how soluble nutrients are. And that's why here in Ontario we might Be a bit different than other locales. Our accredited test for zinc and for manganese is the index value. And what that does is it takes the extractable soil test value, but also runs it through an equation that includes ph. So kind of a general rule of thumb is if your index is 15 to 20, your borderline. If you're less than 15, then chance of deficiency. And if you're greater than 20, it's to 25. It's kind of where you want to be. The other one with the zinc is it's fairly safe to apply, like £3 in a planter is lots. Now, I noticed that Pete asked about reliability of one test to the next. And really, if it's an accredited test, that means it's found a certain R squared that's acceptable for repeatability. But boron is one that we don't have an accredited test for. The standard extractant for that is hot water. And I don't think soil science has really found a tightly repeatable method for boron yet. But part of that is because we're testing so low 1 is considered a high value and 0.5 is considered moderate to low. So very tight range. But I think that's one that we're maybe missing a bit out on as well. Corn and could probably do with a little boron. But I'm hesitant to say that because I don't want people putting on too much and causing toxicity issues right now. Tristan, when I look at this as well, and Jeanette and Jason, who are in Manitoba, so in the prairie provinces there that show up red on the zinc side, um, there is, of course, a difference between, like a soil test level and whether or not you actually see a response to fertiliser additions or whether or not you actually, of course, then you extrapolate from there. Are you seeing a yield reduction? So from from looking at this map and thinking about specifically zinc, is zinc one that, you know, if you know it's deficient, you will see a yield response to added product? Well, I'm an agronomist by nature, and I always say it comes back to it depends. And the reason I say it depends is a little bit on the severity or how deficient that that nutrient is. So I'll give you an example. If you had zinc deficiency, let's say you were targeting 1 ppm, but it was 0.7. It's deficient. But if you compare that to phosphorus, if you were targeting a 15 ppm, Olsen, but you're down to, you know, 5 ppm or single digits, phosphorus is probably more the more limiting nutrient of the two and sometimes you don't get the full expression of the micronutrient deficiency until the phosphorus is corrected. I think there's also a couple comments in the chat saying that it also is a little bit dependent on crops. You look at some things like corn or wheat, they may be a little bit more responsive than some of our legumes in aspect to zinc. So there is some hierarchy where there's some crops that are more favourable than others. I think at the end of the day, knowing that we're oftentimes growing multiple crops in a rotation, it's important just to address and be aware of our RE1 replacing crop nutrient removal of those micronutrients even if it's not an annual basis, if it's sometimes applying zinc every few years to try to at least accomplish the removal rates. But then also that there might be one crop that might be more responsive than another. So making sure that we're not super deficient is important. And, and it all depends on grower risk and their perception of where they want their soil test values. And I'll give it an example is like if you have a long term farmer that owns, owns a majority of their ground, you know, they may have the, a very low risk level where they'd prefer to say hey, my ground, my ground is going to be passed on to my kids. I want to make sure that leave it in the best shape as I can. I want to try to address the fertility issues that I know of. Whereas you have those rented farms, they might be trying to manage it more on the, the, the margin razor edge for, for their, the profitability for standpoint that saying that I may not fix all of my known agronomic deficiencies, nutrient deficiencies, but I'll address at least some of them to make sure I get my return back. And the last thing I'd say is when it comes to micronutrients is that you know, they, while they are important, I have seen double digit yield, yield differences or advantages from those. When you're in deficient situations. Our goal as producer is hopefully not to get to that level. You know, you don't want to see big yield bumps from a micronutrient addition because we know that that was super deficient. You know. And then when you get into single digit yield differences, you know, those are more difficult to see with your eye. And you just got to go a little bit with the basic fund fundamental understanding that understanding crop nutrient removal and uptake and whether we're applying those nutrients at one point throughout the, the crop rotation. Jason shares higher phosphorus will tie up zinc. So I add more zinc. If let's say I'm adding more phosphorus through manure. Uh, Jason always shared. Jason also shared, he's a Manitoba. He shared some of the levels that he uses as those critical levels for zinc depending on the crop. Because as you mentioned Tristan, there's, there's certainly crop differences also wheat. Pete would like you to avoid income tax by building soil tests. So they're your good news for everybody. If you're trying to self fertiliser. Okay, but it does it. That is a question though is. So let's back up a step. And Tristan, you, you pointed out a good example of say long term management of land. And, and Jack, you mentioned, you know, maybe it's rental land versus you know, and I think, you know, conceptually we as agronomists or we think about, whereas farmers, we think about, you know, maintaining levels, drawing down levels. Maybe if we've got into, if we've got a lot of let's say hog manure and rotation or something like that. But there's also potentially the case for building levels of certain nutrients in certain years. But Jack, overall we're not seeing that trend. Of course we're seeing, you know, we're drawing down over time. Where do we sort of land on sufficiency versus building versus drawing down. Like how do you sort of talk that through on all those different options? Yeah, you're right Lindsay. There's, there's multiple philosophies when it comes to recommendations. There should be flexibility in recommendations as well because it does depend on the situation. So if you're on a owned property and it's multi generational building fertility when fertiliser is deemed economic, it could be the best strategy for you. If you're on a, on a farm that maybe in a year or two it's getting developed into houses, well then buildings. Building is not very economic. So that's where you want to do more of a sufficiency. The price of fertiliser versus the price of, of grains will factor into it as well because at the end of the day we want to have our not necessarily maximum yield but optimum yield. That is the most financially sound, giving you the most payback on your acres. But I also encourage people to not just look at the price of fertiliser but understand the value that if it's, if it's what you deem as expensive but you're getting, you know, bushels out of it, then that could be good value as opposed to cheap fertiliser that your soil test is so high it's not responsive, then that's expensive because you're just throwing it away with no response. Jack, I like this point of the relative value of something is not just the price you pay for. It is the payback that comes from each added dollar, which is value versus price. It's the return on investment. And I think that maybe if we've done something wrong over the years, it's that we don't factor in the return on investment. We do. As people in, in the rural countryside and farmers, we tend to look at price. That's right. Tron, you must have thoughts about this. So I would love to hear your thoughts on this, on the conversation of the value versus the price. You're, you're singing my language, both of you, because I know the. Just recently, if you, if you hear anything that comes from mosaic, one of the things that we've been really preaching the last year or so is we call it rofi. Return on fertiliser investment and understanding, you know, where are those inputs most valuable? And we can look at, you know, different soil test levels. Obviously that's a great tool, identify where are we likely to see the best return. But then aside from there, you know, there's ways to improve the efficiency of the fertiliser through the four R's replacement. You know, there's fertiliser additives that we can do to further, you know, combine the fundamentals of balanced crop nutrition with biology to enhance the availability and, you know, furthermore increase the availability of those nutrients. So, you know, when we look at, trying to look at the value, you know, like what's shown here on the slide, basically you can use as a soil test recommendations or threshold to say what is your probability of response from a fertiliser. And a couple things I would note is there's no guarantee of a response. You could have single digit response, single digit levels of fertility. And based on the environmental conditions, we could have a great mineralization this or that. And you may not see a big bump from the fertility that year. However, you are still fertilising the soil and that soil residual fertility can be there for years to come. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's some scenarios, like your very high soil tests, that we wouldn't necessarily always expect to see a fertility response, but we do. And there's, I always find that quite fascinating from a grower myself or when I work with, with different retailers, different growers is like what, in what scenarios are we possibly going to see yield responses? And it can occur. You can have cool wet soils which we never see across your guys area. Right. That might be limiting nutrient availability to the crops. But even though the nutrients are there, they're just not positionally available or biologically available to the crops. And, and this graphic does another good aspect too. It just shows you where is it those nutrients come from to the plants. There is a component that's the fertiliser and then there's another component that's the soil. And we got to remember that majority of the time our nutrients are coming from the soil that's providing the nutrition from the crops. But, but if you, if your soil does not have the nutrition or we're not replacing those nutrients which comes from previous years, fertiliser applications or manure applications or things like that, then the plants don't have the opportunity to access those nutrients over time. There's some great comments here in the chat about base saturation levels. We're not going there tonight, but that's for. That's unless one of my guests or both my guests really want to talk about it. But we don't need to right now. I do want to. Producer Chase, let's go to. I want to switch it up a bit because we've got one last read to do for tonight. But I did pull a clip on proper soil testing procedures and some of the things not to do potentially. And so producer Chase, if you would, let's go to our clip on soil testing procedures and then we'll have our last read of the night. A lot of conversations this winter about sulphur, the impact of getting the right rate of sulphur on soybeans. Horst Bonner, Shaun Castile did a lot of work, a lot of conversations about it and they talked about some of the work Mazecs did last year. 27 bushels in a plot just a stone's throw from here. Tell us about that and tell us about what you're up to this year. Yeah, Bernd. So we had crazy good results. That was our second year doing trials. We had pretty good results, you know, 15 something bushels. The first year we went down the road we got 27 really dialling in sulphur on soybeans. And we're finding these fields, you know, in southern Ontario specifically, and we're expanding that region too. But where the lower CEC soils, they don't have enough sulphur and they're really paying back big time on soybean yields. And we're seeing that here again this year. One of the most visual sites I've ever walked for sulphur. Yeah. So you're gonna get nodulation, you're gonna get better nitrogen utilisation, gonna get bigger seeds, you know, bigger yield. That's right, burn like we just, we're gonna see this all the way through. Every year we see little bit longer stay green, we maybe leaf drop is more uniform, not as long. But at the end of the day, harvest timing is about the same, but we got that little bit later stay green just like we're looking for in corn to maximise seed weight and maximise those yields. So let's take a walk around this plot. We're seeing lots of evidence of that sulphur impact again this year. Let's walk through it, Bern. Okay, Henry, let's kick it off with a look at I guess the cheque here. You're baseline. What do you got? Yeah, Bernd. So the trial consists of paired plots. So we have two varieties each time. When we're looking at the treatments and we have a control, a none. We have fungicide alone, we have AMS alone, we have a gypsum product called Sulphur plus alone we have AMS plus a fungicide. We got our fully loaded package that got us really excited last year. That's pure yield, slow release nitrogen, 100 pounds of it, plus 100 pounds of AMS and a fungicide. And this year our Last treatment is a 2x rate of AMS. So let's go take a look. So right here we're looking at the control plots burn and what we see. You know, they're tough, they're thin, they're yellow. We're probably not getting much nodulation and we're even maybe picking up a touch of SDS in a couple of the varieties already. So there's a cool interaction. Sulphur sometimes can help delay or even suppress how bad SDS is in the plant. It's kind of cool interaction. We'll see what some of the results from the US show as well as they're doing some research on that too. Our sponsors for the agronomists are mmp, the Canola School and Ruminating with re. Ruminating with Real Egg is a podcast series that focuses on all things bovine. We're here to chew the cut on everything from the latest in cattle genetics to how to keep your herd happy with rotational grazing to winter feeding techniques and everything. In between, find it on real agriculture.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so that wasn't the clip, that was the other clip. But that's okay. We can also talk about sulphur on soybeans or anything else we want to talk about as well. Although I don't know if you guys are following along the comments. Does do either of you feel strongly about the base saturation conversation and want to take a crack at it? Tristan, you look like you're smiling, so yes. Sure, I can, I can touch on it. So I love the conversation of base saturation. I'll say it's definitely controversial depending on where you look at it. From the science, my opinion, my philosophy, the way that I've looked at and utilised it is I always start with pounds per acre or ppm. That tells you the quantity of nutrients within your soil. That's the starting point that I use, is kind of good foundation of science. I think that's pretty well grounded. There's not a lot of refuting PPM or pounds per acre. Now, to level set all of us for what base saturation is, is basically, no pun intended, it's looking at the, the percentage of a nutrient in relation to other cations, hence the percentage of bases compared to other cations. And a lot of someone calls out, there's a lot of interest in, in base, base saturation around potassium. Now, you know, I've, I've heard the claims around, you know, 4% base saturation, some target levels or higher. And what that's looking at is trying to have a high enough percentage of your potassium in the soil compared to other nutrients. But it can be challenging when you have some nutrients like potatoes, like calcium, that can be really high in our high PH soils. So where I say is that is I will pay it, I will look at the base saturation, but be aware of what kind of soil conditions you're in. So if you're on a high PH soil, it may not be economically feasible to try to achieve a 4% base saturation. Even if it's ideal or economically correct, it's probably not economically feasible. That being said is even though the PPM or pounds per acre says you're sufficient, it doesn't mean that you maybe won't see a potassium response. But I may not say I need a full crop removal or something to sustain the decay levels there maybe just a little bit. There's a, you could call it a starter or some other thing maybe to supplement or complement what the soil is not able to achieve if you end up with a dry period or some other environmentally challenged condition for that. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, if you look at a maybe coarse textured soil, something that's sandier, they just don't have the holding capacity and the ppms or your pounds per acre won't be as high as what you get in the heavier textured soils. And you might find that while your PPM seems low, your base saturation might be sufficient. In that case it might be over 4%. You gotta use a balancing act between your interpretations and don't get too much into one because base saturation is a ratio. You could have a very small number or pounds of nutrients out there and have a correct base saturation. There's just not enough pounds of nutrients. So I use them both as tools in the toolbox. I lead with pounds per acre or ppm, but use the base saturation is more of a secondary look just to see if things are imbalance and if it's worth trying to adjust it. That's just my philosophy. Comments welcome Jack. If you have any additional comments to provide there. I think our thoughts are similar on that. So I won't repeat what you just said, Tristan, but yeah, especially here in Ontario and Western Canada where we tend to have calcareous soils, high in calcium means the percent K is diluted. So you might, you could very well have high testing PPM and potassium, but a low percentage. So building that over time might not give you the return on investment that we talked about earlier. The other reason I don't look at it is because you could have a satisfied ratio. 5% K, 10% Mag, 65 calcium, but everything's at deficient levels. So how's that any good? And on the other end of the scale, like I mentioned, trying to build K to get a high enough percentage when calcium is already high is hard to do. Maybe, maybe I'll use a silly non egg analogy that if the recommendation is a glass of orange juice to get your vitamin C so you're not deficient, you can drink three glasses, but it's more than you need. And at the price of orange juice these days. I'm not sure why you would. I do like orange juice. I don't need three glasses. So there you go. Okay. Thank you both. Those are excellent answers. Well balanced. I like it. Okay. I want to produce or chase, if you could. Let's go to. I think it's slide three of Jack's because I want to go through a few examples of where. Because there's also a question about, you know, do we use as much of the fertiliser that we add as we think we do? I think that is a. A decent conversation to have, but I want to take. Take it from a bit of a different angle. And Jack, you've got some examples here that sometimes the solution is not just adding more nutrients. We've got to deal with something else, or we are managing for something else that just more nutrients won't necessarily fix, or at least not economically. So walk us through. We can go through this example or another one and sort of how. How that conversation comes together. Well, these are pretty easy because I didn't want to go through it nutrient by nutrient. But what I thought I'd do is put together a few real case examples of where somebody wasn't soil testing and then they finally did and they came to some realisations on what was going on. So in this case, you see some fairly high numbers on P and K. This is where there's a trouble spot or it's not growing well and fertiliser keeps going on to increase yield and it never happens. Well, the soil test shows that ph is 5.2. So in this case, the yield was all based on the ph and efficiencies aren't very. Or nutrients aren't very efficient at low ph. So in this case, because K is higher than Mag, we do look at that K to Mag ratio. I think dolomitic lime in this would turn it right around. Okay, I think there's another example there. Yeah. Yep. I think it's. There we go. Okay, so this is an example where the crop is pale, yields are declining, but there's high fertility. So this is one of those head scratchers where you say, well, what's going on? If you just look at the soil test numbers, but it turns out it's a livestock operation. All kinds of manure, hence the four and a half organic matter in the high P and K and zinc is fairly high too. This is more physical or structural, you know, compaction issues, poor seed bed, poor emergence. Or if you didn't expect such high results based on your history, then maybe there was manure applied and then the sample was taken and the sample has been biassed with manure. But in most cases like this, it's. It's compaction that's causing some problems with growth, not fertility. And we have. I think we have one more. There you go. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I think I even saw this in the comments earlier where this is. You know, continuous soybeans, there's still that perception out there that soybeans don't need nutrient. And it's true that, you know, a lot of the field trials show that they don't respond well to nutrient, but they certainly use a lot. There's a lot of uptake. And, you know, over my career, we've gone from 40 bushels of beans to boy, some people are pushing 70. So you're almost doubling the removal. So this is a case where continuous soybeans organic matters low because there's not much organic matter going back on P and K have been. Been dropping over the years with, with every harvest. And this is the grower that just thought they're easy, they don't need nutrient. Well, he should have been fertilising all along. And then of course, another thing that we should look for in poor yielding soybeans is soybean cyst nematode. That's been a fairly regional problem, but I think it's. It's around in a lot more places than people know. And yes, and this is one of those ones that is a topic we need to do on the show soon because it, it seems to this winter have been popping up more times than maybe we'd like and deserve some attention. Okay. Tries in looking at some of these as well. So these are just examples and some quick examples of where there's so much more, of course, than just nutrient analysis. There's other things that happen. But in, in looking back at, you know, sulphur on soybeans, etc. When you're trying to diagnose some of these issues, what are some of those trickier parts where you're trying to really identify what's going on? Is it a balance thing? Is it a. Is it that you're, you know, is it compaction that's maybe sneaking in there. What are some of the tricky things that you try to get around when we're talking nutrient management? Well, that's where a good agronomist comes in hand. And hopefully they can help distinguish that because I've seen too, where you can get good soil sample numbers. You could have good plant soil, plant tissue numbers, but you find out that what's the limiting factor? Obviously, a crop could look poor. It could come back to compaction. I. We start with fundamentals. If you want to maximise your fertiliser efficiency target and try to correct ph, especially if it's low, it's a little more difficult to change if it's high pH, but if you're low ph, get some sort of lime out there. You can increase your fertiliser efficiency from 20 to 40% just by correcting your PH into a more desirable level for, for the crops. But get your hands dirty. Look for the compaction. You might find that you have high water table. Sometimes I've seen just a lack of good drainage can limit the efficiency of our, our roots to go down and find the nutrients and be able to, to, to, to be prolific there. So. Mm. Now okay, so earlier I'm trying to find it in the, in the chat and I can't find it but Pete made some sweeping claim but I think it's worth mentioning here. There obviously is an efficiency factor of every pound of nutrient we add to the soil and we know that some nutrients are more prone to losses, some different losses and that Obviously there isn't 100% efficiency on everything we add. Tries to. Maybe I'll start with you though. Are we, are we doing better at better matching the nutrients added to, to what the crop actually can access and uptake and managing better or, or where are we maybe still falling flat on some of those efficiency factors. So there's a few things I'll comment on here. Number one is when you look at the efficiency of different fertilisers know or different nutrients know that there's several different things that impacted it. Someone made in a comment that there was someone that claimed that you know, 30% efficiency or 70% of the nutrients was lost for nitrogen. That would be what I would consider probably on the lower side or, or of an efficiency or from from a nitrogen perspective usually I say it's 40 to 60%. But even when you look at a efficiency of a nutrient, the question that we oftentimes ask is what has happened to that other nutrients. It's not always that it's necessarily lost. It might be getting tied up into other pools that we're necessarily not measuring. You know, for example, could that, could that nitrogen be going in organic form or some other form of nutrients and stuff out there? The other aspect that I would mention would be that of just understanding that are we fertilising for the nutrient requirements for the crops? And many times what we thought was acceptable, maybe inefficient or not meeting our needs crop demands throughout there, if you're doing the same thing over and over again, your yields are continuing to improve. We make becoming with shortcomings on our fertility matching our crop nutrient requirements. Now there's great question here from Jeanette Gautier out of Manitoba a diagnosis question. So, Jack, I'll go to you on this one first. Do you take a soil sample every time you submit a tissue test based on an issue not regular, like say with potatoes, but spuds, which is a great word. But Jack, when let's say an agronomist is using something like a tissue test to try and diagnose something, should you always be taking a soil sample? And if so, are there any tips on, on what sort of depth and what you want to actually be taking at that time? Well, to quote Tristan, it depends. And I do know what a spud is, but I love pei and out there it's a Bideta, so. A Bideta, yes. So the soil nutrients don't change that dramatically over time. So a soil test every two or three years on a sandy soil is likely adequate. But it's a good question because the soil test is telling you how much nutrient is, is there available for the crop. It doesn't predict how well that nutrient will be utilised by the crop. And there's so many things that can impact that, obviously weather, you know, moisture, ph. The tissue test is very accurate because it's a total measurement as opposed to the extractable, like in a soil. It's a very accurate measurement on how much nutrient is in the plant. So doing the comparison between the two often is, is very straightforward. You see low in a nutrient and it's low in the plant, but other times it leaves you scratching your head a bit because it could be high in the soil, but low in the plant because something else is causing antagonism or some sort of environmental condition or physiological thing in the plant is keeping it from being utilised. So I don't think you need to match a tissue test with the soil every time. But if it's a really problematic, problematic area, then perhaps doing that diagnostic would be a good solution. And I'd also say with the sandy soils that potatoes are usually grown in, you can, you can pull those nutrients down more quickly. So maybe a two year rotation on sampling instead of every three years. Tristan, that was going to sort of where I go with that. If I've got. If I don't have. I should have. But what if I don't have a relatively recent soil test? Would that be a reason to then do it? And if so, what is considered relatively recent? So when I look at soil tests, you know, I'd say I want them for sure within the last four years. You know, there's some that are being more progressive and doing it every Year, every other year. Like I said, you may not have to be that frequent, but it depends on how quickly or maybe trying to change some of your soil fertility levels. And if you want to see some of those changes and also realising that, you know, even if you're doing something like lime, you don't need a sample immediately the next year, because it takes a little bit of time for some of those things to react. So I use that as a benchmark. If for whatever reason you don't have a soil sample, let's say you got a new piece of, of ground and you got it right ahead of spring and you need to go, I would recommend soil sampling as soon as you can. However, you might find that I'm going to have to just go off of my known nutrient uptake removal coefficients to try to determine how much does my crop need for nutrients and use that as a benchmark and use your idea that, you know, how much do I need to just maintain the crop productivity out there? Or maybe if it was a neighbouring field, you say that's never looked great, you might kind of instinctively know, like, I need to put a little bit more fertility into it. So use those book values, there's a number of them out there, to understand what crop nutrient removal is and make sure that you're, you're, you're addressing those fertility needs from a peanut, mostly for, specifically for like a phosphorus standpoint, that we know that those nutrient levels are already challenged or in our, across our provinces. But don't let equipment limitations, you know, hold back what that right rate should be. You know, this one, probably one of the most common challenges I see out there is we say we want to apply x pounds of product. Let's say it's 100 pounds of product. But that may not be meeting our full crop demands and needs. And while it may be close, when you do that for five years or 10 years, all of a sudden you realise you're a couple crops behind on the amount of nutrients you need and that's what's consequently affecting those soil test values. Really good point. Is that definitely, I think in any of the conversations that we have on, on nutrients is, is exactly that. Have you solved the limitations of how you're going to get that much product on? And so that is sometimes why we have to go different times of year, potentially for different nutrients, etc. Okay, Mark's got a good question and Jack, I'll go to you on this one because you did mention on one of your tests that maybe there was a Manure contamination part of that. So mark soil tests after wheat. So it's every. Every. It says we test all the ground every third year after wheat. So he goes in after wheat and tests, but it's before he adds manure and does disc ripping and a cover crop. Should he be sampling after the manure and the disc ripping versus before, or is he doing it correct in your mind, Jack? Oh, are you muted? We lost your sound. Hang on. There we go. There you go. I wouldn't say he's incorrect doing it the way he's doing now because we definitely don't want any manure to bias that, that sample. And if you're paying for a soil test, you want to make sure that it's. It's the soil you're testing, not the manure. So usually we recommend six to eight weeks after application if you wanted to test the soil after manure goes on. But doing it beforehand and then. And also testing your manure and accounting for the nutrients going on is important as well. And we were talking about efficiencies earlier too. So with phosphorus, you're, you're only counting on 40% of the total there to be available for the next crop. And potassium, it's a little higher. It's about 90%. But I also encourage people to do manure testing because we have good average values, but they're just an average. We know it. Wheat Pete says about averages and, you know, the storage, the, whether the bedding, the feed rations, everything can influence that manure. So where you might be expecting. An example I use, you might be expecting 5 pounds of phosphorus per tonne. You could get as little as less than a pound or you might get as much as 20. So that's a big range over, over an application of manure. So it's always good to test your manure so you know what's going on. You can account for it after the soil test and then just keep up the routine soil test and it'll probably show long term. Okay, we are out of time. We have to leave it there. This has gone very quickly. Tristan, thank you for joining us from an airport somewhere in Saskatchewan. There's only two, so, I mean, that narrows it down. But I really do appreciate it and I hope the weather warms up while you're there because it has been just rude to be honest. But thank you so much. Of course. And for those who are looking for maybe more on this topic, Tristan has joined us on some Soil school episodes as well on Real agriculture dot com. So go Cheque. Those out. And Jack, thank you so much for saying yes and for sharing your expertise and your time with us. I really appreciate it. And maybe at some point we'll have a test for sulphur, but apparently we're not there yet. So we'll keep working. Pretty close. We'll keep working on that one. Okay. Thank you. Of course, to everyone in the comments as well, thank you for making this show a part of your Monday night. Next week, we're going to talk about not just forages, but annual cereal crops and what they can all do or not do, potentially. Yes, Cheque it out. We'll see you right here, 8pm Eastern. Make sure you head on over to real agriculture.com agronomist and get those CEU credits as well. And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter. Have a great night. Cheers, everybody. Sam.