Farm Service Company

Sharron Grabett from the Farm Service Company was the featured speaker this week.  He grew up in Emerson and works in the Henderson area.

For optimum fertilizer placement, the COOP takes soil samples from three acre grids.  Then they can determine the amount of fertilizer to apply to each grid.  Soil samples cost about $8 per acre for these grid samples.  In one example, a farmer was able to save $75,000 in fertilizer costs over 1200 acres.

Asked about nitrates in water, Mr. Grabett said that fall anhydrous application can let more nitrates leach into the water than spring application, depending on the weather.  Warm winter weather allows more leaching.  However, there is not enough equipment in the country to allow everyone to apply anhydrous in the spring.

Anhydrous is expensive now and will probably not go down in price.  There is too much high priced fertilizer in the supply chain.  It also appears that P&K Mines are shutting down to limit the supply.

The COOP is an exclusive dealer of MicroEssentials (ME) SZ fertilizer in Southwest Iowa.  Although ME SZ is more expensive than other fertilizers, test results show a 7.8% advantage over MAP on corn and 10.3% advantage over MAP on beans.  It is used more in Eastern Iowa where it is shipped to by river.  Here it is shipped from Florida on the railroad.