By Stephen Sexton, Director of Technical Sales, Agricen

This is Part 2 in our five-part series about sustainable growing practices and how they are changing agriculture. For Part 1, click here.

Simply intensifying current agricultural practices— whether by farming more land, using more irrigation or using more fertilizer—won’t be enough to sufficiently augment crop yields to meet future food needs.

It’s estimated the population will exceed 9.3 billion by 2050, requiring a projected 70 percent increase in food production to meet expected needs (Fig. 1).

An Increasing Population Means an Increasing Need for Food and Resources

In this podcast, you'll hear from Dr. Fred Below, Professor of Crop Physiology at the University of Illinois, who discusses the role of weather in the nitrogen management of corn, the forms of nitrogen used by corn, and when to apply sidedress nitrogen to best meet corn nutrient needs.

In this video report from summer 2013, we visit corn fields at Nelson Farms in Almeda, Kansas to observe the effects of Accomplish LM in a starter program.

In the Nelson Farms trials, Accomplish LM was applied at one, two, or three quarts per acre with the grower’s standard practice (GSP) of 10-34-0 applied at eight gallons per acre in furrow.

Alfalfa can require high rates of phosphate and potash fertilizer for establishment and growth. One way that growers can increase the efficiency of P and K fertilizers is to add biochemical technologies to their plant nutrition programs. Accomplish LM and Titan PBA are biochemical fertilizer catalysts that can accelerate nutrient mineralization and uptake.

Two trials conducted by Crop Production Services (CPS) in Central Oregon in 2013 show the difference Accomplish LM and Titan PBA can make in irrigated alfalfa programs.

Our partners at Crop Production Services work to get Titan PBA applied to the dry fertilizer that they spread, and for good reason: Titan PBA makes good fertilizers even better. Take a look at the yields from these soybean and corn field trials from 2013.

This soybean trial, conducted in Central Iowa, showed an 11.1 bushel per acre increase when Titan PBA was added to the grower’s standard P & K blend.

With last year’s late harvest and the cold weather across the country, some growers will see more than the usual amount of crop residue in their fields this spring. The good news is that there is still time to get valuable nutrients out of that residue and into the soil for plants to use this growing season. One of the best tools to do this is Accomplish LM, which contains concentrated biochemistry that accelerates residue breakdown and speeds the conversion of nutrients into plant-available forms. By using Accomplish LM for residue breakdown in the fall or spring, growers can increase their nutrient efficiency and see improved yields at the end of the season.

After a career in finance made him realize he didn’t want to spend his days sitting behind a desk, Chad Wetzel of Wetzel Farms in Grayson County, Texas, returned to his farming roots. Today, this third-generation family farmer has approximately 7,000 acres in a corn and wheat rotation. Hear how using Accomplish LM has helped him gain a corn yield advantage in the challenging Texas dryland environment, and learn why he’s planning on using this product on additional acres.

On a trip last year to visit the soybean fields at Rocking Z Acres in Wessington, South Dakota, Agricen's Nathan Cross strapped on a GoPro camera and headed into the field to examine how a starter application of Titan PBA is working at the farm.

Joined by grower BJ McNeil and agronomist Jason Schley, Nathan, BJ and Jason compare the root systems of soybean plants treated with Titan PBA against untreated plants.