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Good Nutrient Management is Key
Dr Peter Barrett Business Development Manager, TIMAC Agri Business
 
Under the new regulations good nutrient management is essential and if properly implemented will take care of lower inputs and compliance with the regulations but in addition will also target better productivity and nutrient efficiency on the farm. But what are the most important points that should be addressed as part of a good nutrient management programme?
Nutrient budgets
Good nutrient management essentially means successfully matching the nutrient supply with the crop demand and it involves the use of nutrient balances or budgets. Crop demand will be on one side of the balance sheet matched against supply on the other, with supply coming from the three sources;
i) Soil
ii) Slurry
iii) Fertiliser

Both sides of the budget sheet should match and fertiliser requirements must be calculated last to balance the books once the contribution from the soil and slurry. Of course the contribution from the soil can only be established by soil sampling and lab analysis and then by using appropriate reference guidelines such as RB209.
Good nutrient budgets and bad nutrient budgets But is there more we can do to further improve nutrient management? Well, it is possible to manipulate the balance to favour the contribution from the soil and slurry, and therefore reduce the need for bagged fertiliser. After all soil and slurry nutrients are free, fertiliser you have to pay for. In truth there is massive potential to make our soils more productive because currently little concern is given to the management of what is actually our biggest resource. Soils contain millions of ‘microbial factories’ that process and return nutrients for utilisation by the plant, a process called mineralisation. Like in any factory, the working conditions have to be right if good performance is to be achieved. These factories will shut down under poorly aerated, water logged and acidic conditions and unsurprisingly drowning in layers of slurry at regular intervals does nothing for working conditions either. Soils that are lifeless cannot make their nutrients available and cannot process and make use of the slurry being applied. Unfortunately these soils are all too common a feature on our farms today making for nutrient budgets that are fertiliser heavy.
However, soil conditions and soil life can be improved by paying attention to soil management. Subsoiling or spiking is useful to get air back into the ground and trailing shoe applied or injected slurry also helps with slurry utilisation and with minimising the destructive effect of heavy application. However, in addition there are soil conditioning treatments that are effective at improving soil life and function. Recent research from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research has shown that the availability of nitrogen from slurry increased by 18% within 20 days of the application of TIMAC’s Physiolith soil conditioner. Physiolith is a true soil conditioner with bioactive ‘prebiotic’ activity. It actively increases the amount and activity of the microbial factories, making their output greater and as a result making more otherwise unavailable nutrients available for uptake by the plant. This is helping to make slurry an asset and not a waste. Reduce your risk not increase your insurance
However, assuming we maximise the potential from the soil and slurry, it is inevitable that under intensive farming we will still need some bagged fertiliser. But are there any gains to be made here?
In general there seems to be an extreme reluctance to eliminate phosphate applications to grassland currently with notions abounding that ‘insurance phosphate’ is needed or that if we obey the regulations phosphate levels are going to decline considerably in 3 or 4 years to the point of severely limiting production. But we know for sure that production is already being severely limited on silage ground throughout NI. The AFBI Vision nutrient monitoring project reported it 2 years ago from findings of extensive soil and grass sampling conducted on almost 70 of our best dairy farms across the country. However, the limitations were not caused by phosphate, instead both potash and sulphur where found to be the main causes of deficiencies and yield reductions. Sulphur deficiencies being found in around 30% of 1st cut silage in contrast to less than 2% for phosphate.
Therefore, it is crystal clear that ‘insurance P’ is a false economy and this money would be better spent putting your house in order addressing the more immediate issues that are actually limiting production. Sulphur is becoming more and more important now as sulphur deposits from the air decrease with the reduction of burning fossil fuels. TIMAC’s most popular product for silage making is Nutricut NPro. It is a zero P that contains potash, plus 20 units of sulphur, plus sodium, plus trace elements; it even contributes to good soil life to make slurry work better through the soil conditioner and bioactive ingredients included.		 Making fertiliser work better
In general, liming has been largely neglected on dairy farms in recent years. AFBI suggested that a shortfall of lime for grassland in NI was around some 200,000t last year which was reflected in analysis of soil tested by TIMAC for this period where almost 80% was below a desirable pH for grassland. However, the impact of pH is such that for nitrogen if pH is 5.5, nitrogen availability is reduced by almost a quarter (23%). In practical terms this means that out of every four bags of N sown, one is essentially lost. Or, your bag of 27% N is in reality only 21%, or the cost per tonne of £140 is in real terms around £190. There are different ways to look at it, but unfortunately they all mean the same thing – wasted money. In addition, for phosphate the implications are even more extreme. At a pH of 5.5, phosphate availability is reduced by 52%! The importance of good pH cannot be expressed enough. However, increasing pH can be relatively easy and TIMAC have recently proven the liming value of granulated Physiolith in an ongoing study at David and Stephen Jackson’s farm in Bangor. Six fields totalling 72 acres on the farm was measured by AFBI, Newforge before and after using granulated Physiolith as part of the Vision project. Figure 1 shows the results of the pH change. Average pH was 5.83, sampled in Feb 2004, 18 months before the application of Physiolith. After the application, pH was measured within one month and had risen to 6.24. In November 2006, one year on from the application, pH was re-measured and it had risen further to 6.37. This is significant in a number of ways, namely the speed of action, the continued increase after one year and the relative cost, actually costing less than 2 tonnes of conventional spread lime per acre.
Contact Contact TIMAC directly on Freephone: 0800 3891299 or via Farmwizard for advice on how to tackle total nutrient management on your farm and start increasing nutrient efficiency today. P Barrett can be contacted on T: 07788435543, E: pbarrett@timacagribusiness.com
Summary •Nutrient budgets are necessary to correctly balance supply and demand
•Supply must be calculated from soil (by soil analysis) and slurry as well as from fertiliser
•There is massive potential to increase nutrient efficiency by encouraging good soil activity
•Apply fertiliser smarter; there are much more pressing fertiliser requirements demanding attention than applying ‘insurance P’
•Apply smarter fertiliser; TIMAC specialist fertilisers address soil and plant requirements and are ideally matched for current grassland needs with zero P and high sulphur compositions
•Use Physiolith soil conditioner for increase soil function, microbial activity and increased pH
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