Every year, growers across the country compete in the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) Corn Yield Contest and attempt to push their corn yields as far as they can go. We want to congratulate all of the 2019 winners, with special recognition to the 6 national and 17 state winners who used Accomplish LM, Extract PBA or Titan XC technology on their winning acres!

Although animal manures can be a rich source of nutrients for crops, the nutrients found in them–whether from swine, beef cattle, dairy cows or poultry–are not always in a form that is readily available for crop uptake.

Phosphorus is a good example. With its negative charge, phosphorus easily binds to positively charged micronutrients, such as those found in animal rations or dairy cow footbath solutions. Once bound, it remains in a form that is unavailable to the plant until transformed through natural processes (e.g., weather, soil microbes) or agronomic management. As a result, growers who have been applying animal manures may see high levels of unavailable phosphorus on their soil tests (indicated by a high Bray P2 value), but a deficit of plant-available phosphorus (low/lagging Bray P1).

Extract PBA, which helps to convert P2 to P1, is one of the agronomic tools available to help growers be more efficient with their nutrient applications by making phosphorus and other nutrients found in manures, crops residues and the soil more readily available for crop uptake.

Wet conditions in the spring can create major planting challenges for growers. In 2019, an estimated 19.4 million acres were left unplanted in the Corn Belt due to flooding and excess moisture in the fields. Unfortunately, this can create favorable conditions for fallow syndrome, a phosphorus deficiency in the soil that can negatively impact next season’s crop.

Growers with fields left fallow can consider making a fall or spring application of Extract Powered by Accomplish^® (Extract PBA) to overcome the potential impact of fallow syndrome. Extract PBA helps growers maximize yields by releasing bound nutrients in the soil, making them available to the next crop.

In 2018, no fewer than five national winners and seven state winners of the NCGA's National Corn Yield Contest used Agricen's biocatalyst technology on their winning acres. We are fortunate to be represented in the best practices of many leading growers, and humbled by the opportunity to help transform grower productivity.

Before the start of this year's harvest, we had the opportunity to meet up with some of the 2018 NCGA winners to celebrate their success last season. Here are some of the folks we are honored to say have used Accomplish LM, Titan XC or Extract PBA as part of their winning strategy. 

Cover crops provide many benefits that can improve the health of soil, water, and the following crop. However, they can also pose some drawbacks. In the spring at planting, cover crop skeletons can interfere with seed to soil contact. They can also stress the seedling by interfering with access to sunlight, requiring the planted crop to stretch so that it can reach above the cover crop canopy.

Extract PBA provides an efficient way to manage cover crop skeletons so that growers can avoid these issues and give the coming crop a nutritional boost. These Nutrien Ag Solutions trials conducted in Ohio show how an application of Extract PBA can break down cover crop skeletons to release nutrients for the following crop. 

Accomplish MAX, Extract PBA and Titan XC are  biocatalyst technologies available from Loveland Products through Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Powered by a naturally derived biochemical technology, these products are designed to increase nutrient availability from applied fertilizers, promote nutrient mineralization in the soil to increase existing nutrient availability, and support root growth through biochemical interactions with the plant and soil.

Broken O Ranch in Augusta, Montana, is a farming operation that grows wheat, barley, alfalfa, flax, canola and chickpeas on about 12,000 irrigated acres.

A big concern at the ranch is how to handle crop residue without burning it. Most states around Montana have banned all burning of residue. Dale Clark, the farm manager at Broken O Ranch, feels that it's only a matter of time before the practice is banned in Montana as well. But he also has bigger issues with the practice.

“Burning residue not only takes time and labor, but it also adversely affects the availability of soil moisture because the ground becomes harder after burning," says Dale. "More than that, it negatively impacts nutrient availability. Nutrients are lost when ash is blown by the wind and redeposited or carried off.”

"At Broken O, we’ve been looking for a sustainable solution that we can implement right now,” he says.

By Stephen Sexton (@AgricenLifer), Agricen

Yellow seedlings are a familiar sight for many corn growers. On continuous corn acres, the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio can be more than double the optimal ratio* for crop residue decomposition due to the buildup of organic matter from multiple years of corn-on-corn rotations. Even if a grower has applied nitrogen during the previous fall or around spring planting, soil microbes can out-compete seedling corn plants for nitrogen when excess carbon is present. The microbes use the nitrogen as a food source, immobilizing it as they work to degrade crop residues; the seedling corn plants, meanwhile, turn yellow due to a lack of available nitrogen.

One effective way to solve the problem of yellow corn seedlings in corn-on-corn rotations is to lower soil C:N ratios by baling corn stalks for winter cow feed. Unfortunately, this is really only practical if one has cows—and most row crop farmers do not. In addition, complete removal of corn residue also takes away a significant amount of the N, P and K that comprises corn stover (Table 1).

When the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) announced the national winners of the 2017 NCGA corn yield contest earlier this year, four of these top corn producers had something big in common. It was their use of one or more biocatalyst technologies made by Agricen and available from Loveland Products. Over the next few weeks we will profile each of those top producers and talk about how they utilized Accomplish LM, Extract PBA or Titan XC as part of their winning program. This week, we start by featuring Don Stall of Charlotte, Michigan. With a yield of 407.22 bushels/acre, Don placed first in the nation for irrigated corn.

Poultry manures and litters are an excellent source of crop nutrients—ones that can be more easily accessed by the crop when Extract PBA, which contains Accomplish nutrient release technology, is used. In the corn trials below, this biocatalyst technology maximized nutrient release from poultry manures so that more nutrients were available to the crop, leading to higher corn yields.  

In a trial conducted in Kentucky, Extract PBA was spread with UAN over turkey manure in the fall. Soil samples from the treated and untreated plots were taken in January, and showed an increase in the availability of many nutrients with the Extract PBA application. At harvest there was a 16.9 bu/acre corn yield increase where Extract PBA had been applied.