New calculators help growers develop input strategies and form fertilizer blends

Nutrien has made two additions to its suite of agronomic calculators: one dedicated to input planning and the other to dry fertilizer management.

Lyle Cowell, a Nutrien senior agronomist based in northeastern Saskatchewan and the developer of the calculators, says in addition to others anchored on the company’s eKonomics website, the new calculators offer a robust planning experience while remaining simple and straightforward to use.

Why it Matters: With fertilizer prices rising at a rapid pace, getting the most value from nutrients and other inputs has become an even higher priority. Agronomic calculators can help.

But of the two, it’s probably the dry fertilizer calculator, or blender, that is the more unique offering, says Cowell.

“I spent a couple decades with the retail side and I always felt like if we sell fertilizer, we should have a blender, and there’s not a lot of good blenders available for a general availability, especially to farmers or to agronomists.”

‘First-stop shop’

Cowell describes the eKonomics platform, which is located online at nutrien-ekonomics.com, as a “first stop shop” for NPKS fertilizer knowledge resources. He says it’s “based on trust,” citing the site’s lack of advertising and Nutrien branding, aside from its URL.

“It is really just to provide that guiding resource for farmers, for agronomists, and I think — to a significant extent — to the scientists that study soil fertility.”

A click on the ROI tools tab on the site’s homepage brings the user to a choice of several calculators, all with a different focus: nutrient ROI, growing degree days, nutrient removal, rainfall tracker, Prairie nutrient removal, nitrogen per acre for anhydrous ammonia, tractor speed/application rate and the two new additions.

Input planning options

Clicking on “Input Planning Calculator” takes the user to a page asking their budgets for virtually everything that goes into producing an acre of crop.

To name just a few, these include crop type, fuel and lube, insurance payments, taxes, depreciation and the nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur and potassium fertilizer the producer needs to apply.

The program then produces a projected farm profit and profit per acre plus anticipated yield, sale price and overall costs.

The tool invites growers to explore various scenarios before committing to a specific strategy, says Cowell.

“It gives you that forward-looking opportunity to understand how much money you have to spend and where you’re going to spend it.”

Cowell encourages users to revisit their results throughout the growing season to conclude what needs to be adjusted either in-season or the coming year.

“You will start to understand what you should spend money on, what percentage of your costs each input is costing. (It makes) you think carefully about those spontaneous purchases that farmers sometimes may make through the year.”

The agronomist urges users to be conservative in their forecasts, particularly yields and crop prices.

“If your average yield on a field is 40 bushels of canola per acre, then you shouldn’t be spending money to grow a 60 bu. per acre canola crop. Maybe you should try to achieve a 45 bu. per acre canola crop.

“The same thing with selling. You shouldn’t expect that you’re going to sell all of your canola next year for $18 per bu. because it might not be $18.… I think it’s safer (and) better to put in relatively conservative yield and sell prices because it keeps you safer in your forecast.”

Despite the numbers involved, Cowell urges users not to treat the results as an accounting summary.

“It’s not a piece of accounting software, by any means.”

The dry fertilizer calculator starts with simple questions, such as preferred unit of measurement and field size. However, it quickly starts asking for data such as pounds of sulphur to come from ammonium sulphate, percentage of urea to be applied as ESN (environmentally smart nitrogen) and nutrient and micronutrient requirements.

This calculator is useful because there aren’t many similar blenders available for general availability, says Cowell.

However, it’s not so useful if the producer hasn’t performed due diligence, such as soil testing, estimating nutrient removal and other key measurements.

“For example, you have to account for incidental nitrogen in ammonium sulphate or incidental nitrogen in ammonium phosphate and you have to work through the general calculations (to make sure) they’re not making errors.

“The blender is just an effort to create something that the farmer (can) take the guesswork out of.”

Like the input calculator, the tool enables growers to work through different scenarios to see which blends are agronomically appropriate and financially realistic.

“Should I be spending $120 per acre on nitrogen and nothing on potassium? Sometimes that’s true, but sometimes you start to realize that something like potassium, which might only cost the farmer $8 or $10 an acre to apply (sufficiently), might not be that significant relative to the amount being spent on other fertilizer or fertilizer products.”

Cowell says a liquid fertilizer calculator yet will be coming soon, probably within the next two months.