Purdue Crop Chat: Being Efficient With Nitrogen Application to Profit in ’22

A new Purdue Crop Chat podcast was recorded Friday from the trade show floor of Commodity Classic, and Purdue Extension specialists Dr. Shaun Casteel and Dr. Dan Quinn were joined by Dr. Chad Lee, Extension grain crops agronomist from the University of Kentucky.

They focused on preparing to plant and grow a profitable crop this year when headwinds on inputs and input costs could prove troublesome. One way to get the most out of the corn crop is waiting to do a true sidedress until V6, applying nitrogen after that. Quinn’s research shows it’s a good move.

“I’ve been kind of preaching this around the state of Indiana this meeting season,” he explained. If you can get the bulk of your nitrogen to where the corn needs it, it just spreads your risk of losing it. We’re just trying not to lose it all. You put it all up front or you put it in the fall, early spring it’s just more susceptible to being the conditions, to rainfall, to really dry conditions. So just trying to get that nitrogen to where that corn needs it, because losing nitrogen is losing yield and losing money.”

Research shows less nitrogen lost and higher yields to be gained when waiting until V6.

The key to success this year will be efficiency.

“Corn is tough this year because of the way nitrogen fertilizer prices are. They’re double, pushing triple of what they were in the past and then there’s the availability of that nitrogen. So getting folks to use those different application methods to hopefully be as efficient as possible with their nutrients.”

Can you profit growing corn this year? Lee from Kentucky says yes.

“We’re agronomists, but the market’s telling you that you can make a profit off of either one, corn or soybeans even with the extremely high input costs,” Lee said. “And so, the market’s telling you to stay in your rotation. In our scenario most of our farms are either corn-soy or corn-wheat, double crop soy, and there’s advantages to that rotation long term, and there’s no reason to move off of that this year in my opinion.”

Click below for the new Purdue Crop Chat podcast, brought to you by the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance. Your Indiana corn and soybean checkoff investments yesterday are paying off today.