Agricen's Scott Lay recently spoke with WITY Radio’s Dennis Michelsen about why pairing Extract PBA with crop fertility programs makes sense.
Dennis - WITY Radio: Before you know it, it will be time to get the 2024 planting season going, and if you want to get the most out of your fertility program, you really need to find out more about Extract.
Scott - Agricen: Applying nutrients is simply step one. The next question is, “What can you do as a farm operation to enhance the availability of those nutrients that you’ve applied?”
Dennis - WITY Radio: The key is not to reduce what you're putting down. It's just to get more value out of every dollar from your fertilizer program.
Scott - Agricen: That's right. Extract is not a replacement for fertility or nutrients. But it is a technology that is available today to aid in the mineralization of nutrients in the soil profile and in the release of nutrients bound by calcium, magnesium or other components in the soil, so that they can be available for your crop.
Dennis - WITY Radio: Like all of your products, Extract has been tested extensively both in the field and by university researchers.
Scott - Agricen: Ultimately, the end result that any farmer wants is an increase in yield. We've done extensive research with land grant universities across the Midwest—Purdue University, University of Illinois, University of Nebraska, Iowa State and others—to validate what Extract is doing in the soil profile to hopefully give that plant a better chance to yield.
There are two things in particular we can point to when Extract is applied in a broadcast fashion on the soil. The first is we're able to increase the amount of phosphorus available to the plant, more specifically P1, by 10 to 15%. Secondly, both the nitrate and soil ammonium forms of nitrogen are increased by 15 to 20%. That's not a guarantee of greater yield, but we do know that there's a high correlation between having greater amounts of soil nitrogen and phosphorus and increased yields.
Dennis - WITY Radio: Extract offers a way to make sure that every nutrient you're putting down goes to good use.
Scott - Agricen: That's true. The term that's becoming more popular is “nutrient cycling.” In broad terms, it’s simply the ability to take nutrients that are applied or in the soil profile and convert them more readily to a plant-available form. Extract can increase the level of nutrient cycling, which can lead to greater yield results.
Dennis - WITY Radio: It all comes down to the bottom line. What kinds of ROI have you seen with Extract?
Scott - Agricen: Extract has been available on the market since 2017, and this past year we treated a little over 2 million acres across the United States. With Extract, the average yield increase for corn over years of trials is 10.2 bushels per acre. For soybeans, it’s 4.2 bushels per acre. For wheat, it’s a shade over 5 bushels per acre. The number of additional bushels needed to pay for that Extract investment is very minimal. In corn, it's less than 2 bushels. In soybeans, it’s about 0.4 bushels to break even.
Our objective with any farmer, anywhere is to help them lower their production cost per bushel or unit of output. We believe that the economics with Extract stack up very favorably. It’s also very consistent in terms of return on investment and, in the longer-term, positively impacting that soil health, which is any farm’s number-one asset.
EXTRACT PBA is available from Nutrien Ag Solutions.
This interview was edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the interview below or on Agricen's YouTube channel.
Learn more about EXTRACT PBA, a biocatalyst specifically formulated to maximize nutrient release from the soil and crop residues, by downloading the EXTRACT PBA booklet.
