Spray Thousands of £s Off Your Fertiliser Bills!

Foliar nutrition of arable crops is now becoming commonplace – all the more so with nitrogen prices through the roof and no imminent signs of easing.

We have considerable interest from dairy farmers in switching to a foliar system of grassland nutrition.   

There are two possible ways to approach this:

Dissolving urea and applying through a purpose-built machine
The “Tow and Fert” system (towandfert.co.uk), developed in New Zealand, involves dissolving granular urea and applying either through a purpose-built machine or through an adapted crop sprayer.  This has the potential to reduce application rates by 50% with no yield penalty.

Purpose-made foliar nitrogen products
Becoming widespread in arable farming, these products (such as Aiva’s AF Nitrogen and Agro-Vital’s Efficient-28) are based on amide nitrogen sources which are approximately 3 times more plant available than granular products.  As a result, the application rates of Nitrogen are very low, but trials are extensively showing comparable results.

Application is through a crop sprayer and brings added advantages:

• None of the detrimental soil effects of soil-applied nitrogen – damage to soil biology, use of soil carbon to convert to a plant-available form.
• Immediately available to the plant.
• Applicable and available during dry weather.
• Easy to combine with trace element nutrition, fulvic acid, bio stimulants etc. as part of a tank mix.
• Delivered in 1000 litre IBC containers – requiring less storage space and smaller load sizes available, easing cash flow pressure.

Converting to a foliar system will achieve best results if an integrated approach is taken – testing soils and leaf to establish crop need for macro and micronutrients.  Nitrogen is seldom the limiting factor!  Most UK soils lack important trace elements and lack the biology to either use fertilisers efficiently or make locked-up nutrients available. 

Most soils have massive reserves of many locked up nutrients such as Sulphur, Calcium, Phosphorous and Potash.  Improving soil biology will make these available and cut your fertiliseor bill!  Can you afford not to?

Contact Tom at tommalleson@fcgagric.com to look at ways on your farm to unlock these nutrients and reduce N applications without compromising yield.