Crop Removal vs. Flat Rate – Pros and Cons

When it comes to farming, there are pros & cons to everything you do in your operation. It is important that you run trials and learn from previous experiences to understand what works best for you. Deciding how you want to deal with your fertility management is a big step heading into the next season and building for the future. Fertilizing your ground is expensive so spending those dollars wisely will allow you to save money, plus spend money where you need it.

Flat rating your fertility program is likely how you have always done things, but have you thought about using variable rate technology instead? Whether markets are up or down, ROI, or return on investment, should always be in front of your mind. Flat rate fertility does not ROI as well as varying the rate across each acre. It will not be exact, but you can use your previous yield map, soil sample results, and satellite imagery to go into creating a custom map for the fertilizer spreader. The map creation process seems scary, but it is so easy, and programs, like VRAFY, make it cheap to do it yourself.

To make the best economical decision, variable rate applications can pay dividends for you on your operation. If you have varying yield goals, you can plan according to your yield maps to build a program. With yield & soil data, you can build zone or grid maps that will help you place fertility where you need it, and vice versa, where you do not need it. An important aspect to building these maps is soil sampling. If you are pulling samples, you can build maps with your soil sample results. If you are not pulling samples each year, that is fine too. VRAFY pulls yield data from your monitor multiple times per acre. You can then build fertilizer recommendation maps based on your crop removal from the crop you are harvesting. This will allow you to make up for the fertility the crop used and have sufficient nutrient levels heading into the next season.