The demonstration site has been in a corn soybean rotation with conventional tillage. The field is well drained and has been grid sampled for fertility levels. The field has 13 years of yield data and RTK is used for planting consistency.
We are seeking to remodel and add equipment to our current 36 row side-dress bar for applying 28% nitrogen to our corn crop. We would like to add a cover crop system to this applicator to apply seed mixture in between our corn rows to get established and then flourish as corn canopy dries down in the fall.
This proposal is intended to monitor the nitrogen requirement and overall fertilizer cost contrasting fall applied hog manure with side-dress nitrogen, strip till with side-dress nitrogen, and conventional tillage with side-dress nitrogen.
With all the different types of applicators of nitrogen on the market, I want to study the efficiency of placement, rater and timing. I want to find that I can cut my nitrogen rates without sacrificing yield. Find the least pounds of nitrogen applied per bushel produced.
As greater focus is placed on nutrient reduction strategies, identifying better methods of nitrogen management becomes more critical than ever. Relying on some of the standard historical nitrogen management practices will no longer be an options as they may not be accepted as a best management practice moving forward.
With so many options on the market of nitrogen models and tools, it is a natural tendency to avid change. There is a sense of security to continue with management strategies that have been regularly used in the past.
New technologies and big data are pushing precision agriculture advancements at a rapid pace, to a point that it is hard to make adjustments and keep up. While not all of these technologies and tools work in every situation, being receptive to adapting new management strategies can be critical to the success of a farm operation.
While manure is a great source of many nutrients when growing corn, the natural variability of nutrient concentrations can create challenge. The nutrient management plan used on these fields should be different than fields utilizing strictly commercial fertilizer.
Traditionally in a continuous corn rotation a nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of between 1.0-1.2 pounds of nitrogen is considered standard. Prior to using PSNT to determine sidedress nitrogen rates this was the NUE observed on this farm.
500 E Travelers Trail, Suite 600
Burnsville, MN 55337
P: (952) 233-0333
F: (952) 233-0420
info@mncorn.org
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