Efficient Fertilizer Use Brings Crop Dividends

Jan 25, 2019

By Ms. Bonnie A. Coblentz

Farms profit margins vary as input costs rise and market prices fluctuate, making every expense significant.

Profit margins, input costs and returns on investment were addressed at the 2018 Row Crop Short Course held in December. Nearly 800 growers, crop consultants, industry representatives and Mississippi State University experts gathered for the event. Organized and sponsored by the MSU Extension Service, the short course is strategically held after the growing season to provide three days of targeted information and education.

A recurring theme this year was the need to fertilize efficiently and effectively to meet the world’s growing demand for food, as well as to maximize return on investment.

Andy Gipson, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce, said agriculture is the state’s largest and most important industry, employing about 29 percent of the state’s workforce.

“Mississippi farmers contribute to the exports needed to feed the world,” Gipson said, noting that in 2018, the state began exporting poultry to India. “One out of three acres in Mississippi agriculture is destined for some type of export.”

Darrin Dodds, MSU Extension Service cotton specialist and Row Crops Short Course organizer, said farmers must invest wisely in fertilizer and other inputs.

“We’ve made some really big crops, but they’ve come at a very big expense,” Dodds said.

He said nitrogen is the most important fertilizer for cotton, and underapplying and overapplying this nutrient can have consequences. In addition, growers sometimes overlook correcting soil pH with lime, and potash deficiency has been appearing more frequently over the past several growing seasons.

“What I want you to think about with fertilizer application is the money you’re getting back for the money you’re putting in,” Dodds said.

Trey Cutts of Yara North America explained the relationship between ammonia and urea production and natural gas, the raw material. He said grain stocks and prices are the best correlation to the price of urea and fertilizers.

“Ammonia and urea production are usually done where natural gas prices are cheap,” Cutts said. “Because China imports and exports so much urea, they set the floor for this price.”

Ross Bender of Mosaic Company talked about the need for sulfur in plant nutrition, explaining how this secondary macronutrient is the fourth most needed nutrient after nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

He said much of the sulfur needed for plant growth came from atmospheric sulfur deposition, or acid rain, in the past. However, emissions control has greatly reduced the amount of sulfur available from the air.

“Animal manure, organic matter and the air are sources of sulfur for crops; the rest has to come from fertilizer,” Bender said. “Sulfur is mobile in the soil, and season-long availability of sulfur is critical.”

Source:mstate.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”