The couple, who farm more than 4,000 acres near Hartney, southwest of Brandon, have been experimenting with split nitrogen applications — spreading their fertilizer across two or more passes during the season rather than front-loading everything at seeding.

For their corn acres in particular, the approach has helped them stay flexible when weather throws a curveball. Splitting nitrogen lets them spread out risk, workload and logistics through the season, Nathan Beernaert said.

“We’ve run off our residual early and been able to top up to where we needed to be later in the season. It’s saved our butt a couple times.”

WHY IT MATTERS: As well as being touted for reducing financial risk without hitting yields, split nitrogen application is among the practices caught up in the quest for fertilizer efficiency, assuming farmers can work it into their workflow.

The Beernaerts apply UAN 28-0-0 liquid nitrogen in season via drop nozzles, targeting the base of corn plants before tassel emergence. They’ve tried putting down 100, 50 and even zero per cent of their nitrogen needs at planting, followed with a mid-season top-off.

The results haven’t always been what they expected. One of their strongest corn crops came in a year when they applied no nitrogen at planting and put it all on later in a June–July pass, Nathan said.

“It went against a lot of the other experience we had doing that, and against some of the norms associated with nitrogen availability or crop uptake in corn.”

Research backs in-field experience

Splitting fertilizer applications is one of the identified best management practices rooted in 4R nutrient management philosophy, noted Xiaopeng Gao, professor of soil fertility at the University of Manitoba.

Holding back on some of the fertilizer at seeding can better match crop needs for nitrate requirements.

“Especially where the crops are small, they don’t need a lot of nitrogen at the beginning,” Gao said, adding that nitrogen applied later in the season matches the peak growth stages of the crop.

Why and how nitrogen gets lost

Across the Prairies, nitrogen use efficiency is often only about 50 to 60 per cent for the current year of application, meaning a large share of fertilizer isn’t taken up by the crop in the year it’s applied, Gao said.

Better timing can push that number higher, though there’s still a lack of data on exactly how much.

“If you can do a better job in terms of the 4Rs, especially if you can time the fertilizer supply better with the crop needs, that can improve the efficiency, maybe up to 70 per cent,” Gao said.

Nitrogen loss hits both at the farmer’s wallet and environmentally, and it happens through several pathways depending on soil type and location.

In Manitoba’s Red River Valley, with its heavy clay soils, nitrogen loss mainly happens through denitrification and the unfortunate transformation to nitrous oxide — the greenhouse gas at the heart of Western Canada’s fertilizer emissions debate and the government’s push to curb them. The risk is particularly high while ground is waterlogged during the spring melt.

On sandy soils, such as the potato lands around Carberry, the bigger risk is leaching. Shallow-rooted crops like potatoes, with their high nitrogen and water demands, are especially vulnerable to having the nitrogen they need leach away on coarse-textured ground with low water-holding capacity.

A third major loss pathway is ammonia volatilization — nitrogen escaping to the atmosphere when urea is broadcast on the soil surface rather than banded below ground.

“But if you can improve your placement by banding the soil, either side-banding or mid-row banding, that can effectively reduce the loss,” Gao said.

Other tools to reduce nitrogen loss

The Beernaerts are also considering nitrogen inhibitor products, which Gao said can make a real difference under the right conditions.

Enhanced efficiency fertilizers fall into two main categories: polymer-coated products like ESN, which slow down nitrogen release over time, and inhibitor-based products that include urease inhibitors and nitrification inhibitors.

The benefit of inhibitors is most pronounced when conditions are already driving significant nitrogen loss — a warm, wet early growing season, or in low-lying areas of a field prone to ponding and denitrification.

“Under that condition, if you use some inhibitor products, that will reduce the loss,” Gao said.

Under normal conditions though, if the nitrogen loss is already minimal, farmers shouldn’t expect a benefit by using those products, he added.

“It depends on the soil condition, the landscape and also the environment conditions,” Gao said.

Thinking beyond the next season

For the Beernaerts, nitrogen management is not just about the economics of a single season. With nitrogen making up roughly a quarter of their input costs, and prices that can spike suddenly based on global events, efficiency matters.

It’s also about setting up the farm for the long term.

“We want to set ourselves up for the future succession of the operation,” Chelsi Beernaert said. “We want to know that it’s in a good position to be left when we’re not around.”

The post Split nitrogen applications help Prairie grain farm manage risk and efficiency appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Granted, if they had the forethought and storage capacity to buy fertilizer in the fall or top up their farm fuel reserves, they’re not taking mortal financial blows right before seeding — but with every new gas field struck, fertilizer plant shuttered or country shutting down fertilizer exports to protect their slice of the global pie, it seems less likely that supply chains will get back to status quo anytime soon.

According to an FCC web post, released in early March and recently cited by our reporter Miranda Leybourne, a 2022 study suggested about half of Prairie farmers have their fertilizer by late March. That’s more than in Eastern Canada (only 10 per cent of Ontario farmers had done the same), but it still leaves a lot of producers potentially eating big bills this spring.

Cycle of uncertainty for farmers

As our executive editor Laura Rance noted a few weeks ago, this kind of chaos has become all too familiar.

COVID-19 threw international supply chains into a blender. Inflation has ballooned far more for farmers than even other Canadians. Manitoba Agriculture staff puts the farm inflation rate in the last five years at up to 50 per cent. Canada picked another fight with China, and canola took the brunt. Then there’s the second era of Donald Trump, whose policies have helped throw more uncertainty and market volatility into the mix than the world has seen in decades.

Farmers have become unfortunately used to waking up one morning to find their market gone or input prices spiking due to events impossible to anticipate and which often have nothing to do with them.

A system can only take so much before people start looking for alternatives. If farmers are shopping for innovations though, they’re going to have to wrestle with the reality that many of those technologies have the word “sustainable” associated with them.

That’s the tone of society; and it’s often the buzzword that attracts either public or private investment enough to get those ag tech concepts over the finish line.

Many farmers resent the “green” mandates being imposed upon them by government and public pressure. The federal goal to reduce fertilizer emissions by 30 per cent under 2020 levels by the end of the decade is a prime example.

Farmers’ were first and foremost worried that it would turn into a hard limit on nitrogen fertilizer use. The federal government has always denied that, saying that it’s going to be more about encouraging efficiencies.

If urea futures are going to start spiking 30 per cent though (as they did within two days of the intensified conflict in Iran), maybe less natural gas derived fertilizer isn’t a bad thing.

A case for self-sufficiency

Most of the farms that I’ve seen who have bought into regenerative or “sustainable” practices have a financial reason, rather than just an ideological one. They want long-term viability and to be able to absorb shocks they’ve observed in the field or have suffered in the bank account.

Such was the case with R&L Acres near Sperling, home to Manitoba’s first on-farm green ammonia plant.

Yes, government and researchers had an environmental interest in the initiative. It uses hydro power and electrolysis to get hydrogen from water, rather than natural gas. Combined with nitrogen from the atmosphere, it becomes on-farm manufactured ammonia.

Researchers have even suggested that green ammonia could one day become an alternate fuel source for machinery.

Farm owner Curtis Hiebert, though, also talked about a desire for self-sufficiency, to decouple from the whims of the fertilizer market and save money, especially when regular ammonia prices were up. The numbers presented in 2024 put final cost of a 500 tonne per year system at $948 per tonne for the farmer.

That may not always offer huge savings, but it will be consistent, and that certainty is also worth something. At the time the system was being installed, the fertilizer market was in turmoil because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Today, there’s a whole new set of world affairs mucking things up.

One plant doesn’t mean green ammonia is about to roll over conventional ways of farming, nor is it clear how much our renewable energy infrastructure would be able to support. Manitoba Hydro has already warned about its looming capacity limits. The up-front cost of the system is also big: an estimated $4.5 million in 2024.

Green ammonia is, though, an example of the kind of farm-focused innovation that could offer legitimate solutions and resiliency in an increasingly uncertain world.

We shouldn’t get so caught on the word “green,” and any complicated feelings that word comes with, that we dismiss the equally real impacts for self-sufficiency, sovereignty, stability and, in the best of cases, cost savings.

The post OPINION: Global chaos raises stakes for green farm technology appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Touted as a first-of-its kind foliar-applied nitrogen, alignN 18-0-0 is formulated for nitrogen-demanding crops like canola and wheat. It gives growers the ability to apply encapsulated urea nitrogen directly onto and into the leaf, where it is absorbed for maximum intake and metabolism while reducing nutrient loss.

“Canadian growers now have a new way to protect their precious fertilizer investments,” said Norm Davy, president and chief commercial officer for Tidal Grow AgriScience.

“Our precise formulation of alignN allows nitrogen to bond electrostatically to the plant, helping keep it available under challenging conditions and reducing losses from volatilization, leaching, and runoff.”

The company said AlignN demonstrated effective in-season nitrogen response on wheat with up to 22 increase increase in flag-leaf diameter, a boost in protein content, and increased yield by up to seven per cent, with net returns offering $10-$25 per acre. This despite “extreme drought” conditions.

Similar results appeared in canola trials with increased yield of up to 10 per cent and more than one per cent boost in oil content, with net returns of $15-$35 per acre.

AligN is compatible with most herbicides, fungicides, and other nutrient inputs.

The post New foliar-applied nitrogen enters Canadian market appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

In 2021, the program started with 42 growers and 42,000 acres. By 2024, the program had grown to 146 growers and roughly 700,000 acres across western Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: Farmers are increasingly being urged to be efficient with their fertilizer, both for their own bank accounts and due to sustainability pushes.

The Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes (SNO) program will pay qualifying farmers a minimum of $2 an acre. Carlos Rivera, senior sustainability manager at the Saskatoon-based fertilizer producer, said the firm was uniquely positioned to encourage stewardship throughout the nutrient supply chain.

“Nutrien is unique in the sense that we manufacture fertilizer, but we also sell a portion of that fertilizer directly to growers through our retail arm,” he said during a recent web presentation as part of Fertilizer Canada’s 4R Incentives program.

Nutrien is the largest producer of potash fertilizer and the largest global agricultural retailer, serving customers in seven countries, he noted.

While farmers never want to waste nutrients, they’re also applying them into a complex natural system that frequently does its best to strip them away. The SNO program hopes to encourage producers to look at new ways of preventing that from happening.

“We know that when farmers are applying nitrogen, a portion of that nitrogen is going to be lost as nitrous oxide emissions through the denitrification,” he said.

Qualifying

The program follows a validated protocol called the nitrous oxide emissions reduction protocol (NERP), which was developed by the Alberta government in 2015 for their offset system. Nutrien’s program makes that protocol eligible in a voluntary space, in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. To participate in the program, a grower must be a Nutrien customer and work with a Nutrien agronomist.

Nutrien leverages all those principles and frameworks at the field level, capturing information using a proprietary sustainability program called Agrible, which Nutrien has used since 2022.

“It allows us to capture everything at the field level to model, at the end of the day, the outcomes that growers are receiving based on the NERP principles. These outcomes obviously have a monetary value to growers and an environmental/corporate value to Nutrien,” said Rivera.

NERP is a tier approach that measures agricultural practices based on a combination of 4R practices.

Growers can be placed at the basic, intermediate or advanced level, yielding different emissions reductions per pound of nitrogen applied in the field. The basic level is 15 per cent, the intermediate level is 25 per cent and 35 per cent is the advanced level.

“You are the pre-basic level if you don’t have a 4R agriculture infrastructure plan crafted by a designated 4R agronomist,” he said, noting have one was a prerequisite to joining the program.

Growers must have a copy of a soil test or a nutrient balance to justify the target and rate selected for each season. From that baseline growers can begin tweaking their nitrogen management, incorporating things like variable rate prescriptions and enhanced efficiency fertilizers such as nitrification inhibitors, dual inhibitors or polymer coated urea.

“You can unlock higher tiers, and reach for the advanced program,” Rivera said.

Payments for the program are using $65 per tonne of carbon, but payments are equally site specific.

“It’s not going to be the same if you’re in Regina, or if you’re in a much wetter area, like Brandon, Manitoba,” he said.

“The wetter the area, the higher the payment, simply because of that nitrification potential being higher,” said Rivera.

According to Nutrien’s website, southern Alberta growers average incentives of $4.91 an acre for canola, $3.40 an acre for wheat and $2.61 an acre for barley, while northern Alberta growers average $2.78 an acre for canola and $2.57 an acre for wheat.

Bang for buck

Nitrogen-hungry annual crops are the lowest hanging fruit for the incentive program, as the payments will be higher with a higher target nitrogen rate, Rivera noted.

“The higher the pool of nitrogen that you have in the field, the higher the potential for these losses to happen. The mitigation potential for applying an international structure plan and all these practices in the field is going to be higher,” he said. “Keep in mind that the target nitrogen rate needs to be justified by a soil test or nutrient balance.”

Once the targeting rate has been defined with the help of an agronomist, growers can start seeing differences in payments as they jump from basic to intermediate to advanced. The program has four different steps: enrollment, in-system, harvest and processing.

“From enrollment to harvest, we work very closely with growers and our retail agronomist and then processing is internal to the sustainable ag team,” he said.

Enrollment starts mid-February and goes to early May. Enrollment is when growers and their Nutrien agronomists are crafting their 4R nitrogen stewardship plans.

Growers sign a contract to be involved in the program for a single year.

“If growers like the program, they can keep working with us. If they don’t like the program, they can walk away,” said Rivera.

The contract explains the terms and conditions, data privacy, data usage and all the data and evidence growers need to close the program in a season.

“In-season and harvest are basically the core of the program,” he said.

Everything is captured under NERP field data including application data, scouting reports, pictures of equipment, fertilizer receipts and so on. The firm uses it’s proprietary Echelon Ag Tool system to collect yield maps and application maps, for both fertilizer and crop protection applications.

At the end of the season, once all the data is gathered, the sustainability teams subjects the data to internal quality control measures.

“If no flags are detected, we will notify the grower they need to hit commit. This is basically an attestation, saying that everything that happened in the field is true,” said Rivera.

If issues come up, the sustainability team goes back to the grower or agronomist to rectify that data. After the grower hits commit, payment is issued in the form of a credit into the account.

Data delivered

On top of that, the grower will receive a sustainability report, providing the grower information around land use, nitrogen use and efficiency for that operation in a regional benchmark.

The Agrible platform gathers a wide range of data from each growing season.

Since Nutrien is pursuing verified carbon assets, they need to use external verification.

Carbon pricing was increased from $35 to $65 dollars a tonne.

“We increased it to mimic the federal pollution pricing that Ottawa was setting for the country,” he said.

Data for 2021 and 2022 has already been verified and 2023-2024 data are on their way.

“I should clarify that we pay growers after we have received a complete data set with all the data and the evidence. We don’t wait for verification to pay,” he said.

Last year, 72 per cent of acres in the program were at the basic level, and 28 per cent of acres were at the advanced level.

The post Nutrien pays farmers for efficient nitrogen appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

If so, you’re not alone.

WHY IT MATTERS: Nitrogen is considered one of the most challenging nutrients for corn production.

Daniel Quinn, associate professor of corn production and agronomy at Indiana’s Purdue University, said the interaction between corn yields and nitrogen levels is perennially confusing.

Indeed, Quinn considers nitrogen to be “one of the most challenging nutrients” to manage in corn production, in part because of how it responds to environmental conditions.

Dependent on the weather

Weather conditions determine how nitrogen moves and transforms, as well as its availability to the crop.

Too much rain, for example, leads to leaching and denitrification. Too much heat and little moisture, conversely, increase volatilization to the atmosphere. Less mineralization under the same conditions also means it’s less available to crops. High residue levels can immobilize nitrogen for growing crops, often necessitating the application of higher nitrogen rates.

Soil productivity can have a significant impact as well. In corn trials conducted across different growing regions in Indiana, check plots receiving no nitrogen fertilizer brought yields ranging from 20 bushels to more than 200 bu./acre.

Such a range, says Quinn, is clearly “a function of the productivity of these soils,” but understanding exactly how nitrogen is more available in higher quality soils is difficult.

What we can control

While environmental variations are a “big frustration, headache, and challenge,” Quinn emphasizes corn growers can exert some control by mitigating nitrogen losses and ensuring it’s maintained in sufficient levels for when the crop needs it. Regarding the latter, he says modern hybrids do not require more nitrogen overall compared to older genetics, but they do take up more of the nutrient post-silking — anywhere from 30 to 40 per cent more, according to Purdue’s research.

Inhibitor additives can be an effective tool for both reducing losses and ensuring fertility levels at critical growth periods. But, when possible, it’s important to match the type of inhibitor being used with risk.

For example, using a volatilization inhibitor in sandy soil with subsoil-applied liquid UAN — a growing environment where leaching might be of greater concern — may not be ideal.

With so many inhibitor products on the market, Quinn also stresses growers should “pay attention to the active ingredient and what type of inhibitors” a product is using. Some products are proven effective, others less so. Even in products that have proven effective at increasing corn yields growers should not expect to see better results when environmental conditions are good.

“If we don’t have leaching, we don’t have nitrogen loss conditions, we don’t expect nitrification occurring, so we’re not going to expect a response,” says Quinn.

“Inhibitors do what they are supposed to do. But environmental conditions and application methods often dictate the magnitude of response.”

The post The fickleness of nitrogen appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Researchers at the university used CRISPR gene editing technology to increase a naturally-occurring chemical that allows the wheat to fix nitrogen according to a November 25 report from ScienceDaily.

WHY IT MATTERS: Nitrogen fertilizer is an enormous cost for Canadian farmers — not to mention a source of tension due to potential environmental impacts.

“For decades, scientists have been trying to develop cereal crops that produce active root nodules, or trying to colonize cereals with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, without much success. We used a different approach,” said Eduardo Blumwald in the report.

Blumwald is a distinguished professor in the University of California, Davis plant sciences department.

“We said the location of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria is not important, so long as the fixed nitrogen can reach the plant, and the plant can use it.”

Researchers, led by Blumwald, examined 2,800 chemicals that plants make naturally and identified 20 that could encourage nitrogen-fixing bacteria to form biofilms, the report said.

Biofilms are sticky coatings that wrap around the bacteria and produce a low-oxygen environment suitable for nitrogen fixation.

The team identified the genes involved in the process of making these biofilms. They then edited the wheat plants to create more of the related compound, called apigenin. The plants produce more apigenin than they need and the excess is released into the soil.

In experiments, the surplus stimulated soil bacteria to protective biofilms that allowed them to fix nitrogen in a form usable to the wheat plants.

Blumenwald noted that about 500 million acres are planted with cereals in the U.S.

“Imagine, if you could save 10 per cent of the amount of fertilizer being used on that land,” he said. “I’m calculating conservatively: That should be a savings of more than a billion dollars every year.”

The advancement could also support farmers in developing countries.

“In Africa, people don’t use fertilizers because they don’t have money, and farms are small, not larger than six to eight acres,” Blumwald said. “Imagine, you are planting crops that stimulate bacteria in the soil to create the fertilizer that the crops need, naturally. Wow! That’s a big difference!”

The university has a pending patent application for the wheat. Bayer Crop Science provided some of the research funding.

The post California researchers create nitrogen-fixing wheat appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

It’s a waste, particularly if fertilizer prices are high. It’s also a black mark on agriculture, which, as an industry, is trying to pitch its existing environmental sustainability at a time when public scrutiny on things like nitrous oxide emissions has never been higher.

When it comes to fall fertilizer application, minimizing loss is a big part of the conversation. At the site of one federal research project, it’s the whole point.

“We have seen that with our winters here, there is sometimes not very significant differences if you applied in the fall or applied in the spring, so you might as well just do it in the spring,” Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research scientist Patrick Mooleki said.

“Now, when it comes to (lowering) nitrogen losses, whether it’s volatilization, denitrification, or leaching, what’s the best (application) time to do that? So in a nutshell that is the purpose of this study.”

Mooleki was speaking to attendees of the Northeast Agriculture Research Foundation field day near Melfort, Sask., in July.

His project analyzes the effects of different timings for fall nitrogen application. Researchers are comparing early (Sept. 25), mid-season (Oct. 10) and late-fall (Oct. 30) applications, both to each other and a spring application.

Mooleki is working with the theory that nitrogen losses correlate with moisture conditions at the time of application.

It’s in its second year across the Prairies, with two Manitoba sites, three in Saskatchewan and one in Alberta.

Two different nitrogen sources (SuperU and urea) are incorporated into the study.

The two inhibitors in SuperU — one to inhibit urease, and the other to reduce denitrification of nitrates — adds another topical nuance to the study: assessing farmer cost. The idea is to see if, by using enhanced efficiency nitrogen, lower rates of product can ultimately be applied.

Plots treated with the two sources are being split between a full recommended rate treatment (140 kilograms per hectare) and a 60 per cent treatment (85 kg/ha).

“We’re applying the nitrogen based on the recommended amount of nitrogen for this area,” Mooleki said. “So we take the samples in the fall, take them for analysis, (and) we see how much nitrogen is in the soil. So based on that, we have a recommended rate we’re gonna use.”

To quantify the results, they’re looking at yield, overall plant quality and number of plants per square metre. Additionally, they’re taking soil samples the following fall to identify the level of nitrogen that remains after crop uptake.

Nitrogen study results

When comparing fall applications, results at Manitoba sites and Swift Current, Sask., found that yields increased as applications dipped farther back in the fall. At Lacombe, Alta., early fall and mid-fall applications performed not that differently from spring when it came to yield.

At every site except for Melfort, however, yields from spring application did nose ahead of the fall treatments.

“Based on the results that we have seen so far here in Melfort, grain yield has responded to the nitrogen timing, and spring nitrogen application resulted in a lower grain yield,” Mooleki reported.

The mid-fall application date, meanwhile, was showing taller stalks and fuller heads at the time of the 2025 field tour.

The researcher pointed to weather conditions. Last year was dry in the Melfort area with limited spring rains.

Mooleki is awaiting the full analyzed results of this year, but expects to see impacts to protein and yield between applications.

Developing a weather eye

Mooleki and his team have been monitoring weather conditions and soil moisture levels with ground probes and a weather station. With that technology, they hope to link their observations of moisture conditions with associated expected nitrogen losses.

Some processes of the nitrogen cycle are bound to happen, like nitrification, but the amount of loss from other processes could be limited with better timing, the researcher said.

The post Soil moisture and fall fertilizer loss appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The study, led by soil scientist David Lobb and Marcos Cordeiro of the University of Manitoba’s department of animal science, sought to model nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the surface runoff of three watersheds: one each in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Their model, calibrated to be specific to Western Canada’s conditions, incorporated 15 years of weather data to account for the impacts of precipitation. Statistical analysis allowed researchers to estimate the relative contribution of soil, vegetation and manure to nutrient export. Simulations captured the dynamics in snow accumulation and stream discharge.

Their findings suggested that manure was, at most, a secondary source of nitrogen and phosphorus in those watersheds. They also found that nutrient levels ascribed to manure were relatively constant during the simulation period between 2005 and 2019, despite variation in precipitation.

“This is interesting because, for the most part, we tend to think that beef production is one of the main sources of nutrients,” Cordeiro said.

Of the three nutrient-causing factors, the researchers put manure in third place in Manitoba and second place in the two western Prairie provinces. Manure’s reported contribution to total nutrient export ranged between 7.9-20.2 per cent for total phosphorus and 6.9-11.8 per cent for total nitrogen.

The impact

The Beef Cattle Research Council, which helped fund the project, noted the importance of having accurate models for runoff to help producers better understand how management affects pasture watersheds, as well as what they can do to mitigate nutrient loading.

“It will also give policymakers accurate, Canadian-specific data to use when writing future policies around watershed management,” a BCRC-published summary of the project read.

The BCRC also noted that the regional variation in the findings implies that there’s no one solution for excess nutrient loading. Solutions will have to be region-specific.

Challenges and next steps

Using a model helped save time and money compared to field research, said Cordeiro, whose specialty is environmental modelling.

“The idea for us was to set up a model for a couple of watersheds first and see what the model tells us,” he said. “And then, from there, we can go to more targeted field research where you can monitor (with) a much clearer idea of what you’re trying to assess.”

That field research is the next step in homing in on nutrient sources.

“Rather than starting from scratch having no idea of where the nutrients came from, we now have a good idea,” he said.

The journey, however, hasn’t been without bumps.

Models are only as good as their data. Going in, the researchers knew that all watersheds in the study had a grassland cover proportion of approximately 75 per cent and relatively large cattle-grazing density. However, these pasture areas were not what Cordeiro would describe as “data rich.” The only watershed with stream flow and water quality data was the Alberta location of Meadow Creek. The Manitoba and Saskatchewan watersheds (Beaver Creek and Maple Creek, respectively) lacked this information.

“Agricultural areas are not really well monitored, so we had to select some watersheds that had the best data available … we worked with models and tried to represent them as best as possible. And we feel that we had — given these caveats — a very good result and a handle on at least how this system behaves,” he said.

The Alberta location could be assessed directly with the available information. “The other two were validated using regional data available, water yield, for example, which is less precise,” Cordeiro said.

Eyes on the prize

All of Cordeiro’s grasslands research plays into a goal to preserve landscapes and the ecological goods and services they provide, while also enabling producers to manage those services.

“What we try to show with this research is that these landscapes have value. They provide services that are important for society as a whole,” he said.

“We need to show this value because it’s very romantic to talk about lush landscapes and beautiful scenery, but at the end of the day people have to make a living out of those landscapes.”

The project was funded by the Beef Cattle Research Council, the Canadian Beef Cattle Check-Off and Environment and Climate Change Canada.

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Potash prices have been falling after shipments from Belarus and Russia resumed. These exports had been significantly restricted last year following Western sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Demand for fertilizers was also weak during much of the year, analysts have said, as farmers waited for prices to settle down.

Potash prices averaged $250 per tonne during the reported quarter, the company said, compared with $633 per tonne a year earlier (all figures US$).

The company’s U.S.-listed shares fell three per cent after the bell.

Nutrien said potash sales volumes, however, climbed 23 per cent on strong sales in North America.

Fertilizer inventories in the U.S. had been running low which should result in relatively robust demand, BofA Global Research analyst Steve Byrne had said ahead of the earnings.

On an adjusted basis, Nutrien reported earnings of 35 cents per share for the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with the average analyst estimate of 64 cents, according to LSEG data.

Nutrien, the top U.S. agricultural retailer, also narrowed its adjusted earnings forecast for 2023 to a range of $4.15 to $5 per share, compared with a range of $3.85 and $5.60 earlier.

The company forecast fourth-quarter fertilizer demand would be up five to 10 per cent year-on-year.

Nutrien added it was lowering its nitrogen sales volume forecast due to the unplanned outages in the third quarter and pull-forward of a planned maintenance outage at its Borger site in the current quarter.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sourasis Bose in Bangalore.

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Samuel Taylor, a New York City-based farm inputs analyst for RaboResearch Food and AgriBusiness, delivered a presentation on the fertilizer market during the firm’s Fall Harvest Outlook webinar on Oct. 25.

Taylor presented a fertilizer “affordability index” which is measured using global fertilizer prices against global crop prices with a baseline of zero. Last September, the value was 0.01, down from around 0.25 in July. By comparison, the index had fallen to minus 0.65 in Jan. 2022, its lowest value since the Great Recession of 2008. Despite this, the index, and the worldwide affordability of fertilizers, are expected to improve into July 2024.

Separated by fertilizer type, potash had the best affordability index value at 0.32 (historical average at 0.11) in September, followed by phosphates at 0.07 (average at 0.11) and nitrogen at minus 0.19 (average at minus 0.04). Taylor predicted global nitrogen prices to increase by more than five per cent, while global prices for potash and phosphates will remain virtually unchanged.

RaboResearch Food and AgriBusiness also estimated a three per cent year-by-year increase in global fertilizer usage in 2023 and further projected a five per cent rise in 2024.

“Since (the Russian invasion of Ukraine), we’ve seen a rationalization towards fundamentals. A lot of the price action was built on timing and also capacity of supply and demand,” Taylor explained. “There’s a little bit of clarity there and a little bit more re-establishment of supply chains.”

In North America, Taylor added that year-by-year, prices for ammonia will be down 50 per cent, potash retreating by 44 per cent and phosphates pulling back by more than 10 per cent. In addition, prices for herbicides will be cut 50 per cent, fungicides 40 per cent and insecticides 25 per cent.

“From a cost-structure standpoint, there are some positive elements that you can point to,” he said.

However, Taylor warned the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict could cause additional issues. In 2021, Israel produced 3.96 million tonnes of potash and 1.07 million tonnes of phosphates — seven and two per cent of global market share, respectively.

“As far as we’re aware, (Israel is) functioning as normal,” Taylor added. “However, within the context of quite a large mobilization, there is the risk in the future that there could be some disruptions to logistics, to manufacturing. But there is nothing to report on (now).”

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

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