Optimum rate

Jan 16, 2025

Variable rate (VR), as a phrase, is thoroughly uninspiring. Boring. People want to hear about VR about as much as they want to hear about the 50-year-old wool suit I bought at Value Village for $22. I see that now. But optimum rate! That inspires.

In October, I wrote a LinkedIn post about a breakfast conversation I had with Blake Weiseth, who runs Discovery Farm at the Ag In Motion site west of Saskatoon.

“Variable rate is sexy, but it’s not the next logical step for a lot of farmers,” Weiseth said at breakfast. “For many farmers, using a fertilizer blend and rate appropriate for each field is their next step to more precise nutrient management. With field-to-field variability sorted, then let’s tackle in-field variability.”

I shared this quote on LinkedIn and asked, should precision ag advancement follow a step by step path? Or can farms skip from (a) one fertilizer blend and rate for all canola or wheat or pea fields to (c) precise management of zones within each field? This would leap past the middle step of (b) a fertilizer blend and rate appropriate for each field.

The responses were varied and insightful, founded largely on farm and agronomy experience.

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Video: Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday

Field Talk Friday | Dr. John Murphy | Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes

Most of us spend our time managing what we can see above ground—plant height, leaf color, stand counts, and yield potential. But the deeper you dig into agronomy, the more you realize that some of the most important processes driving crop performance are happening just millimeters below the surface.

In this episode of Field Talk Friday, Dr. John Murphy continues the soil biology series by diving into one of the most fascinating topics in modern agronomy: root exudates and the role they play in shaping the microbial world around plant roots.

Roots are not passive structures simply pulling nutrients out of the soil. They are active participants in the underground ecosystem. Plants constantly release compounds into the soil—sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and other molecules—that act as both energy sources and signals for soil microbes.