Wheat Pete's Word, Feb 4: Phosphorus starter, soil biology, and sorting fact from fiction

This episode of Wheat Peeds Word is brought to you by Syngenta. There's a new standard for soybean seed treatment in 2026. Ask your seed dealer about Victrado. Complete for your soybeans with five active ingredients targeting nematodes and key soil borne fungal diseases. Good day and welcome to Wheatbeat's Word here on Real Agriculture for Wednesday, February 4th on this episode of the Word Spring. So much cool stuff to talk about and then we'll go right to agronomy answers. Lots of stuff to cover cover there. So let's get going. Let's go. Yes. So by the ways, lots of cool stuff to talk about, lots of agronomy, but I gotta tell you, it's winter time, it's the time of year that I'd like to take on the Word and go a little bit more in depth into some really great agronomic questions. You guys aren't firing them at me. So come on, get with the programme, give me some challenges and we'll try to do them justice here on the Word. To begin with this episode, I want to talk about the yen, the Yield Enhancement Network. You can still register. Now, this is just a great programme. I know it costs $300, but you get like $30,000 worth of worth of information out of it. It just, it's one of those things that you have to, you have to spend a little bit of time looking through the report, maybe going through it with your agronomist, but there is tonnes of information there and I really like when Joanna Falling's Dennis Pennington, the people that drive the yen forward. The best is if you can get to a meeting where they talk about two different growers, one that has a low wheat yield, one that has a high wheat yield, and the two growers are on relatively same soil type, same moisture, and they walk through those management differences. That is incredible. Next, congratulations to Senator Rob Black, who is going to be inducted into the Ontario Ag hall of Fame, one of five this year. Course, Senator Black has done lots with agriculture. He grew up in agriculture and Critical Ground, I believe, is his latest focus. Just talking about soil health and all the things we need to do there. Congratulations, Senator Black. Absolutely well deserved. Now, here's some cool stuff that you don't really think about, but low water on the Mississippi. So Mississippi is the main grain transportation route to export grain out of the us. It goes basically from Chicago all the way down to New Orleans. And they're low water level. They can't load barges as full as normal. The Ohio river has some ice and also low levels, so that's impacting it. The Illinois river has lots of ice because of this polar vortex. So they can't load barges, as I understand it, on the Illinois. And all of that, all of that adds together because the, the export price worldwide isn't determined based on, you know, what, what that transportation cost is. It's based on what other places in the world can deliver corn or wheat or soybeans for. And that means if they can't carry as much on those barges, well, the price they pay farmers in the US Midwest goes down, the basis drops because the export price doesn't change or certainly doesn't change very much. And so it's having a big negative impact on the price offered to US Farmers. Similar thing here, only we're used to it. When the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence system freezes up, but low water on the Mississippi, you would not think of that. But the cold weather means less rainfall as well, more snow. And so right now, yep, having a big impact. Record production in China. So that's kind of interesting. China's a huge grain producer. We don't think about it that way because they have such a big population that they rarely export anything unless every once in a while they do. They're just, just amazingly good marketers. But the interesting thing about that is that their corn crop in the north in particular is just got lots of toxins in it. And they did not say whether it was dawn toxin or fumonisin. I mean, Last night on TechTalk Tuesday, we had a great discussion about pesky pests. We had Dr. The Iowa connection, Dr. Allison Robertson, Dr. Aaron Hodgson, both from Iowa State. But corn in Iowa gets fusemonisin from, from Fusarium. We get dawn from Gibberella. They're basically the same fungus, but not. It's different stages of that fungus. So I don't know what's going on in China from a toxin standpoint, but it's high enough toxins in that Chinese corn crop, they're actually having to substitute wheat and barley and other grains in their feed rations. So that's kind of cool as well. Hey, if you get a chance, listen to an interview with by Dr. Toby Kears or read what she does. She received the Tyler Prize for environmental achievement. She's out of the University of Amsterdam and she talks about mycorrhizae. So we talk about mycorrhiza lots in crop production. We know that they are part of the system, that network in the soil that brings phosphorus, the VAM or the amf. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are the main ones that infect the root or attach to the root, and they put their hyphae out through the soil and make massive inroads in terms of how much of the soil the root gets to explore for phosphorus in particular. And so Dr. Kears is the greatest champion for mycorrhizal fungi out there. And, and her work is fascinating. She describes it as being similar to being in the deep depths of the ocean where we basically know almost nothing. And there's all these interrelationships that people learn about that we didn't know. So the discoveries are incredible. Mycorrhizal fungi trade carbon from the plant for the nutrients they bring to the plant. But. But this fungal network and the way that they can develop and how they will choose who to give carbon to. And almost, it's almost like they know how to barter or they know how to change and give plants that will give them more carbon for those nutrients, deal with them more than the plants that give them as much carbon. It's fascinating, fascinating stuff. I really hope we can get her interviewed or get her at Southwest Ag Conference, because, man, it is phenomenal from that perspective. Hey, in the post we'll include a link to an article by Dr. Kerry Wolob out of Washington State University talking about smoke and potatoes. And so it just kind of goes through that whole thought process, and it doesn't matter if it's potatoes. But what's interesting is that when we have smoke, it really can predispose different plants to ozone injury because there's ozone in the smoke, and the ozone goes inside the leaf and becomes a reactive oxygen species. And so we get that typical, what we call ozone burn, which I wasn't aware of, that smoke would cause that potatoes. Not a big deal if we don't ever see ozone injury that I'm aware of to a big extent on cereals or on grass crops. But man, edible beans, they are highly susceptible to that ozone injury. And so in Washington state trials and also some that they did in Idaho, that's really where we see that big impact is on edible beans if there's too high ozone content in that smoke. On the other hand, if the smoke keeps the temperature down and doesn't dim the sunlight, too much smoke can actually increase crop yields. And she covers that really, really well. A question from a caller coming in saying, hey, Peter, Tech talk Tuesdays. Can we find them after. And yes, they are recorded. So this, of course, is part of the Ontario Ag conference that wheat Pete's part of. And I actually host TechTalk Tuesdays. But what's really cool on this last Tuesday we talked about insects and about the effect of cold temperatures. Again in the post we will link an article from Anthony Hansen out of University of Minnesota. I think that's, that's really the best article I've seen in a while on how cold temperatures impact the different insects that we, we deal with. And he doesn't cover all of them for sure because Minnesota and there's other ones out there but aphids. So soybean aphids are one of the few insects that really can be impacted by super cold temperatures and they are, they are tremendously cold tolerant. It takes minus 34 Celsius to really start to reduce their numbers. Minus 34 Celsius for the Americans listening, that's minus 29 Fahrenheit. And they have had that cold temperature in northern Minnesota up in the rainy river area of Ontario into Manitoba. So definitely overwintering of soybean aphids in that area is going to be reduced. But southern Manitoba, southern Ontario, Michigan not sorry about our luck. We have not had cold enough temperatures and pretty much every other insect lives in the soil and they have soil probes in Minnesota that they watch for that the temperatures simply have not been cold enough. I am afraid that's the case in Ontario too. We, we cannot say we're going to have less insect pressure here in Ontario at least because of the extreme cold temperatures that we have had. Hey last, before I get into other stuff, Dean sending me a question around pfas. So these forever chemicals, these chemicals that contain fluorine and in specific he sent me an article that was was blaming pesticides in agriculture for our PFAS problems. So I reached out to our Ontari PFAS expert, Dr. Scott Mayberry from University of Toronto. Scott has, has published over 200 papers on this and he says absolutely probably half of our pesticides contain some fluorine. If it contains fluorine, pretty much it's a PFAS or it's a fluorinated chemical product. It's going to have longevity in the environment. I've talked about this before on the word it just fluorine, it just has long life in the environment. So trifluralin, well fluorine in trifluralin. So yep, that's one of those compounds. However, a whole bunch of pharmaceutical compounds so Prozac as an example also has fluorine in it. So it Fits there. The reality is though, that the vast majority, who knows what percentage, but the huge percentage comes from other sources. Fabrics, carpet coatings, all of those things. And the little bit of fluorine that we would put on at a litre per acre of trifluralin or whatever that rate is, it escapes my brain at this very minute. Yeah, that is not causing the problem in the waterways. It's 100% or 99.99% coming from other sources. So what we're doing in agriculture is not a big deal. It reminds me of microplastics. So my good friend Mel with the Land Improvement Contractors of Ontario giving a presentation about drainage to a group and the questions out of the, out of the group were, well, what about microplastics coming out of the tile? And I'm going like, really? That's the question. But sure, it's plastic tile, there's probably microplastics, but again, there have been studies done and the microplastics in the stream coming down past where the tile dumps into the stream almost 100% of the time have far more microplastics in them than the almost not detectable microplastics coming out of the tile. So we are diluting the number of microplastics. Not that we want to add any, but there is no such thing as zero. And that's true with all these things. I think you just have to keep that in the back of your brain. Okay, I need to move on. And agronomy answer. So first up, I asked last week about triticale. Does it lodge because of the Eastern Ontario Crop Conference and man, a great agronomist. This Monday, if you get a chance, go back and listen to it. Lindsay Smith and you know the forage, I forget exactly what the title was, but all about annual forages and winter annual forages. And tritical was one of the main ones. And man, everybody says, and Trevor, I like Trevor's response the best to me. He says, pete, my normal nitrogen rate on my triticale is 110 pounds per acre of nitrogen. If I put 180 on, it falls over. And I think, I think that's the kind of the, the thought process we all had. Definitely triticale stands better than just common cereal. Rye hybrid rye stands much better. But you can make triticale go down. And thanks to all the growers who did give me feedback to say, yeah, it stands really well. But if you get a massive rainstorm on a super heavy crop and then get some wind with that massive rainstorm. Yeah, Triticale will lodge. I don't think that's a surprise, but I do appreciate the feedback. Next, Cole from Alberta saying, okay, Pete, I just, I have high ph soils, I have low sulphur soils, and I have a single shoot seeder limits how much fertiliser I can put on ninety pounds. Hundred pounds per acre is sort of the, the maximum to get the seeding done. Otherwise my efficiency just goes in the sewer. And I've been putting on 20, 30, 010 sulphur in that band and top dressing my nitrogen. But I'm really wondering on my low ph soils, is there a better way to go? Should I be broadcasting ammonium sulphate in the spring? But then would it volatilize? And what do you think about my system? And he sent a soil test and absolutely high ph soils. So kind of that 747-6-78 range, low soil test, sulphur. But the other thing that really jumped out at me was the low phosphorus. And coal is a livestock producer. He's bailing off barley barlage most of the time. He also grazes corn stalks. But coal, first off, sulphur does not volatilize. It's not nitrogen. So you could broadcast in the spring ammonium sulphate and you are not going to lose any of that sulphur. So if that allows you to speed up the planting process or get a little more nitrogen, because, you know, 20 pounds of nitrogen at planting on a spring barley crop really isn't as much as I would like. But you putting it right with the seed. There's limits to how much you can do there in any case. But yes, I would definitely say broadcast some sulphur. You're in Alberta, so you could actually broadcast elemental sulphur in the fall and you're not going to lose it the way that most of us here in Ontario would. You're a dry climate and it will change over time from elemental sulphur into the sulphate form that crops pick up. And it will stay there unlike the wetter climates of Ontario and East. So another option would use a micronized sulphur with your phosphate. There are some products, some map, that are coated with micronized sulphur. It's available much more quickly than the elemental sulphur, but a hundred percent. I think you find a different way to put your sulphur on so you can get a bit more nitrogen there. But here's the other point that I want to jump on. First off, I'm not at all Worried about your high pHs? I grow crops on a pH of 8.2 and they still will grow fine crops as long as you have reasonable organic matter. My problem with high PH is it's on my knolls and that's lower organic matter. But the PH isn't the problem. Cole, in your situation you have single digit phosphorus, some as low as 5 and 30 pounds of phosphorus with the seed and a decent barley crop that you remove for forage, you are mining phosphorus all the time. About, according to the data that Shane and I did way back when we did Those trials, about 20 pounds of phosphorus in every tonne of dry matter. With a forage barley crop in Alberta, I expect you're at, you know, two and a half, three tonnes. So you're taking off maybe 60 pounds of phosphorus, you're putting on 30. You need to do something to build that phosphorus back up. There's got to be some way to get more phosphorus into that programme. On that note, Greg from New Dundee saying, hey Peter, so what about 2x2 phosphorus and sulphur on my soybeans? I'm on sand soil so you know, sand soil we would expect a sulphur response or a higher probability of sulphur response. Although Greg, you have manure and I think that changes that as well. But he says what about a two by two broad or two by two band rather versus a broadcast application? Well, if it doesn't slow down your planting process, sure, put the sulphur and phosphorus down in a 2x2 band. But all of Horst's data on on soybean says that broadcasting works just about as well as banding. And so I'm not sure that you gain much by by putting the band down. If you're driving through the field anyway, go for it. But I just don't think you gain quite as much as you might think on the sulphur in soybeans front. So Johnson is part of the mini yen, so Honeyland Ag Services lab services, they run a mini YEN in soybeans and also in corn. I participate in that because it's kind of fun to look at the data. I looked at the data from my soybeans and my nitrogen to sulphur ratio was 21 to 1 in both tissue sample timings. According to Shaun Castile, who is the kind of the father of sulphur and soybeans out of Purdue University in Indiana, he would say that if you have 18 to 1 or higher that you're short sulphur and yet I sent my dad at a horse to our soybean specialist, I said, Horst, I got 21 to 1, 21 to 1. But when I put sulphur on, I don't get a response because I've done it. I did the trials again this year and Horst just sent back, yep, Peter, think this sulphur on soybeans is going to be a bear to figure out? I'm not sure the 18 to 1 plays here from a ratio that we can look at to predict sulphur response, but it's something we have to keep looking at. Peter from Kinburn sending me a great question saying, pete, help me with my math here. I've been putting 80 pounds of map. I blend it with my winter wheat seed. By the way, I've had the all awesome results by doing that. But man, is it slow. Like it's just such a slow process. And I've been looking at going to liquid starter fertiliser, but I keep looking at 5 gallons of a liquid starter fertiliser and saying I'm not getting as much phosphorus. It is 6, or pardon me, 5 gallons of a liquid fertiliser. 6, 24, 6, 10, 34, 0, something like that. Is it going to be enough phosphorus for that wheat seed? Or maybe I should just keep doing what I'm doing because I have had good luck with it and if it's not broke, don't fix it. So first off, Peter, good for you to look at options and think of different things because that's how we drive the bar forward. If you look at 80 pounds of MAP, well, that's about 41 pounds of phosphorus. If you look at 5 gallons of, let's say a 6, 24, 6, that's 16 pounds of phosphorus. So nope, you're getting much less phosphorus with the liquid. There's no doubt about that. Our data would say that on average that 5 gallons of a liquid starter would give you about 4 bushel per acre yield gain. If you look at just 50 pounds of MAP, so that would be 26 pounds of actual P2O5. That will give you six and a half bushel per acre yield gain or two and a half bushels more than the 16 pounds of phosphorus. Can you get enough out of that five gallons of liquid? Not a chance if you're on a low soil test. So it really boils down to is the convenience of the liquid going to make up with speed of planting. Because man, if you delay planting, if you can't get it all done because you're spending time blending that MAP with the seed and, and filling the drill more and you all of a sudden plant 10 days, two weeks later because of wet weather, then the convenience of the liquid definitely plays. My other comment would be just cut back to £50 of map and add the rest of the phosphorus somewhere else in the system. Just like I talked about with coal, we have to put enough phosphorus back on, but 50 pounds of map would just mean you filled that much less frequently. The difference between 50 of map and 80 of map is about one bushel per acre. So certainly not a big difference and probably doesn't pay for the MAP in that particular situation. All right, one, a couple of last quick things. Some great green lightning research. So this of course is where you buy the unit, you plug it in, it's supposed to make, turn water into nitrogen a little bit. I don't know. Sounds too good to be true. Well, guess what, Becks, in the United States, they do tremendous trials, just awesome trials. They looked at Green Lightning and they actually put a zero nitrogen strip in and the Green Lightning was exactly the same as the zero nitrogen when we added urea, or 28% when we added real nitrogen. Yeah, we got a nice boost in yield. So I'm afraid that it looks like too good to be true is actually not true. And last but not least, Jason Mock tweeting out, you know about tiling ground and how, how 30 years from now we're all. Because water will become the limiting factor in Yield. And he's 100% right there. But we're all going to wish we hadn't tile drained ground. I just, I don't believe that is a correct statement. And so I tweeted back some data from Eileen Kladivko. She's tile drainage and soil health researcher from Purdue University. She's been around, I think, a long time, almost as long as wheat peak. She showed some amazing data at the Southwest Ag Conference and in that data set at her CPAC research farm, if they did not tile drain, they got zero Yield gain over 37 years in their corn crop, even though we know there's been genetic gain. As soon as they tile drained, they saw basically two bushels per acre per year, which is the national average in the US So they had to tile drain so that they could let those genetics express their yield potential as well. Where they didn't trial tile drain, they got no improvement in soil health whatsoever. Where they did tile drain, they saw a significant improvement in soil health from, from all the different practises that they employed. So man tile drainage if you're in a wet environment. Too much water tile drainage pays, there's no doubt about that, and it does not have negative consequences. And that's a long enough wheat beets word. That's it. That's all. On behalf of the team here at Real Agriculture, this is Wheat Peat with the word for Wednesday. Yes, February already. Hey, send me some cool questions to challenge me and even if you don't, I'll find something to talk about. But send them to me. We'll talk to you next week. See you then. Thank you for downloading this episode of week Pete's Word. Brought to you by Syngenta and the new soybean seed treatment, Victrado Complete. Victrado Complete is the most complete soybean seed treatment defending your soybeans from below ground pests with above ground results you can see. Visit syngenta.com ca for more info.