Agronomic Thoughts - January 2024

The 2024 crop season is off to a much better start than the previous two years. Everyone has received some much-needed moisture to fill in wheat stands and to start to refill the moisture profile. Some of the fall fertilizing and strip tilling has been stopped by the moisture but seems to me this is a worthwhile trade off for what has occurred over the last 2 years. A couple of things to think about if you haven’t been able to get your strip tilling done. As we get closer to corn planting it will be important to decide if you have enough time to get strips settled before you are ready to be there with the planter. This will depend on your particular soil type and how much moisture we receive after application. The other concern with strip tilling in the spring is the depth of your NH3. As we get closer to planting you usually want to place your NH3 deeper to not cause any germination issue. The positive that we will have is that the moisture in the strips should be very good, so we can take that issue off of the table. We have discussed in the past the fact that if you haven’t removed much of any crop, you haven’t removed a lot of nutrients. On the reverse side of this most of the irrigated did very well in 2023, so don’t forget to replace those nutrients for the 2024 crops. Sounds like fertilizer prices are holding steady, so it won’t be a race against price to get it applied.

If you are upgrading displays or will have new technology on your farm this year, be sure that you receive the information that you need to get it set up before the season starts. Part of that may be spending some time in the Operation Center building new setup files or learning a new area of the Operation Center. Because of all the new technology that has been coming onto the market your PrairieLand team has been ramping up on support staff to help you make all this new technology work. 

If you have any questions about the new displays or any of the new technology, be sure to get in touch with your salesman.

If you are interested in getting some grid samples pulled, be sure to contact me sooner rather than later as the moisture will slow down the grid sample work. The sooner you are on the list the sooner we can get those results back. After the last couple years of drought, it might be a good time to know what you have out in the field. Some of the results that have come back in the last 6 months are saving operations quite a bit of money on fertilizer.

As always, reach out to your PrairieLand team to let us know what we can do to help you on your operation.

Rob Meyer, Agronomic Specialist, CCA