To Fertilize, or Not Fertilize…Can You Afford It?
High Fertilizer Costs are Forcing Growers and Farmers to Re-evaluate
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, about 70% of farmers in the U.S. can’t afford the fertilizer they need right now. Between rising inflation across the board, a war in Iran and closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the cost of fertilization has ballooned. Many growers and farmers who are dependent on soluble nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers depend on shipping through the Middle East.
Word through the grapevine to me is that many farmers are just going to skip fertilization because they simply can’t afford it. So, they cross their fingers and hope for good enough yields or try different crop rotation strategies. Some growers are simply being forced to pivot away from crops that need a lot of nitrogen, such as corn.
What do Fossil Fuel Costs Have to do With Fertilizer?
If you’re still not sure what the connection between the current U.S. and geopolitical conflicts and fertilizer prices really are, that’s OK. Most Americans don’t understand the agricultural connection with fossil fuels. To produce non-organic fertilizers the industry is highly reliant on natural gas. This is particularly true with nitrogen fertilizer, which is made directly from methane (natural gas) and atmospheric nitrogen through the Haber-Bosch process, to create ammonia. The gas produces the hydrogen and the nitrogen is extracted from the air. The ammonia can then be processed into liquid or solid fertilizers that include urea and ammonium nitrate. Shortages or shipping constraints on any of these quickly inflate prices.
China makes almost 30% of the world's global nitrogen fertilizer, but they use more coal than they do natural gas. The U.S. makes about 10% via Midwest and Gulf Coast natural gas, with Russia and India both also producing about 10% each. That means U.S. growers and farmers are often reliant on foreign sources for fertilizer.
Add to the global unrest and shipping constraints the skyrocketing fuel costs, like with diesel, and now you also have significantly inflated transport costs. All of these factors contribute to high costs and eroding margins for growers and farmers. And I haven’t even touched on how all of these factors also impact many of the other products, packing, tools, etc. used by all of us in the industry.
Direct costs aside, applying lots of water soluble fertilizers with nitrogen and phosphorus isn’t just expensive, it creates significant water contamination issues. Not to mention, in combination with all sorts other chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, growth regulators) applied to both ground farming and container culture, wear down and deplete the bio-activity and productivity of soil.
Bring Life Back to the Soil
If you are an organic nursery or greenhouse grower, cannabis producer, field fruit and veg grower, or vineyard, then you may already be using less soluble inorganic nitrogen products, but many fertilizers labeled “organic” or “natural” often still contain significant percentages of inorganic forms of N-P-K. Even Certified Organic fertilizers, which are required for certified organic farming, can contain up to 5% inorganic ingredients, or up to 3% soluble nitrogen. So it’s still important to monitor what inputs you are reliant on, and are you getting the results and yields you really need.
If you’ve been growing and farming conventionally, using primarily soluble inorganic inputs, you might now be thinking about how to transition away from heavy use of these types of fertilizers. Or, at least start to reduce your reliance on them without eliminating them completely. Perhaps you find yourself forced to skip them altogether due to high costs. But how do you do that without losing yields or maintaining overall plant quality?
What it really comes down to is what your soil can provide naturally (or not), and how vigorous you can grow your plant’s root system. So, if you’re looking to get the most of your existing soil and growing media, and do it in a way that’s regenerative with a lower environmental impact, you need to focus first on soil health, and then building strong vigorous well-branched root systems - not just the top green growth of your plants.
Bringing life back to your soil and growing media is a powerful way to unlock what may already be bound up in your soils, as well as make some free nitrogen fertilizer from the atmosphere. Microbial activity is also necessary to break down any organic matter (including organic fertilizers such as manures) to make the uptake by plants possible.
The Power of Soil Microbes
By employing beneficial microbes, such as Azotobacter spp. and Bacillus subtilis, you can fix some atmospheric nitrogen for your plants (free nitrogen!), make bound up soil phosphorus available to plants so you don’t have to keep adding it, boost a plants’ natural immunity and tolerance for temperature, drought, and pest stress, strengthen a plants structural integrity, and, via the hormones synthesized by these bacteria, boost root elongation and development – which in turn increases the plant’s capacity to absorb water and vitamins from the soil (when I say vitamins, I’m referring to what most people call “nutrients”). All of which can boost yields more naturally, and all without damaging your soils, contaminating your local water sources, or spending as much on expensive fertilizers and pesticides.
All of this also applies similarly to installing plants in landscapes and long term plant success. Having worked as a horticulturist and in the landscape industry in the very extreme climate in Texas for many years, getting plants established and pushing out new root growth as fast as possible is key to plant survival. When you have to install plants in spring, for example, then get through an intensely hot and dry season (which can last about 7 months) without croaking, fertilizer is NOT your friend. You don’t want to push a plant to use energy growing new leafy growth by giving it a bunch of nitrogen …when it doesn’t have a substantial enough root system to support it during extreme temperatures or water scarcity. You need ROOT growth, and that means a root stimulator.
When I teach horticulture students, they are often surprised by how much I will focus on information that’s “under the soil”. It’s always gratifying when it finally “clicks” that the root system of a plant isn’t just a secondary component - it’s a primary one. Without healthy soil and healthy roots, it’s tough to accomplish your growing goal - be that better biomass on your lettuce harvests, big fat tomato yields, good bud, bigger better grapes, or landscape shrubs and trees than can better weather stress.
And what's better than reaching your growing goal while also being a responsible steward of your local environment and ecosystem, soil, and water sources.
