Many technologies and practices play a role in helping farmers protect soil and improve water quality. At Black Hawk Lake in Iowa, that's making a difference. 

Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network spoke with Scott Lay about making sidedress applications pay off with Accomplish LM. 

Iowa Agribusiness: Tell me about Accomplish LM.

Lay: Accomplish is a product we've had on the market for several years. It's a fertilizer biocatalyst, which is a product that makes nutrients more available to the plant. It mineralizes nutrients that may otherwise be bound up in the soil, creating a better outcome or yield result in the crop. 

Iowa Agribusiness: Obviously farmers are going to have to put on more nitrogen this year. So this is a supplement to go along with that?

RFD IL Radio Network spoke to Scott Lay about getting the full value out of sidedress nitrogen applications. Below is an excerpt from their conversation.

RFD: Given the wet weather we had earlier this year, is there a question of how much nitrogen growers need to put on their fields?

Lay: The number of additional units of nitrogen needed–if any–is based on the amount of precipitation and type of environmental conditions growers have experienced since planting. Today, we have a number of nitrogen modeling tools that we can use to help make this determination, which makes it more of an exact science than it has been in the past.

Now that growers finally have their corn planted, many are considering adding more nitrogen to their fields. Scott Lay spoke with Hoosier Ag Today about why sidedressing supplemental nitrogen is a positive practice.

Hoosier Ag Today: Our heavy spring rains in Indiana have reduced a lot of the nitrogen that would normally be available for a corn crop this year. Scott Lay, with Loveland Products, says that sidedressing nitrogen is a practice that makes economic and agronomic sense this year.

Lay: Any time you can more closely align your nitrogen application with when the corn plant needs it, you're able to get a better result. In addition, a supplemental application of nitrogen in season is more environmentally sound, because less nitrogen is prone to loss. Given some of the weather this spring, I think it's important that we take a good, hard look at how much nitrogen is available to the growing corn plant, and then ascertain how much nitrogen may be needed.

Although it’s tempting for growers to put out all of their nitrogen early in the season when it’s easier to apply, splitting the application into a pre-plant and a sidedress application can be an effective way to ensure that the corn crop has enough nitrogen to meet its needs at peak demand. This can be especially beneficial in wet years where leaching of pre-plant nitrogen is likely to have occurred.

If you've seen our farming film, Prove It to Me, you may be wondering, "What were the growers' yields?" 

For the Iowa growers who were trialing Accomplish LM, corn yields increased by an average of about 5 bushels/acre when the Accomplish LM biocatalyst was added to the grower's standard fertilizer program. Individual grower results can be seen in the chart below, with yield bumps that range from +0.12 to +10.74 bushels/acre.

Seeing is believing. These corn plants in Central Indiana show an increase in plant growth and root mass where Accomplish LM is included in the grower's starter fertilizer program. 

Chris Perkins, a Nutrien Ag Solutions location manager in Otwell, Indiana, likes to practice what he preaches when it comes to the products he recommends to growers. If he’s not familiar with something, he tests it on his own family farm and carefully evaluates the data to make sure the product is living up to its claims.

“My dad lets me have 17 acres for a community plot where we’re doing corn on corn,” says Chris. “I want to show guys ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing, and this is what we’re seeing because of this product, management practice or hybrid.’”

Over the past few years, Chris has been evaluating Accomplish LM and Titan on his 17 acres, and he’s seen both his yields and his soil nutrient values rise. Along with the fertility added by the continuous corn, he credits the Accomplish and Titan technologies for contributing to a good portion of those increases.

One of the benefits of using Accomplish LM in production agriculture is its ability to increase the availability of nutrients in the soil. A quick soil nutrient analysis performed at the Loveland Products Research Farm in Owensboro, Kentucky shows just how quickly and powerfully a soil application of Accomplish LM can release bound nutrients to make them available for plant uptake.

In this demonstration, soil was collected from the field, mixed in a bucket and separated into two equal samples. The untreated sample was bagged, sealed and labeled. The second sample was bagged and Accomplish LM was added to moisten the soil without oversaturating it. The bag was then sealed and the sample incubated for 24 hours, followed by a 3-day air drying period prior to lab analysis.

For growers who are applying a starter fertilizer this season, adding a fertilizer biocatalyst like Accomplish LM can be an excellent way to enhance a starter application and set the stage for a great yield.

Accomplish LM speeds nutrient mineralization to get nutrients in the right form for plant uptake, while also improving the root systems of young seedlings to facilitate nutrient and water uptake. In these Nebraska and South Dakota trials (below), adding Accomplish LM to starter fertilizer increased corn yields by 8 to 10 bushels per acre.