 Thank you Brenda and good morning to everyone and I know Steve just stepped out but I Steve gave it in good introduction to what I'm going to be speaking about this morning. I'll give you a little bit more details on some research results and such. So I will I was asked to talk about the placement but I do have some timing work and I do have some end stabilizer work that I wanted to show you also. So you've heard about this Steve gave the introduction to this and we used to weigh back when I learned soil fertility and then they changed things to nutrient management Joe and you know the environmental aspect has been around for a while and some states have focused more on it than other states. I came up through Florida and even in the 70s it was a big concern with phosphate and nitrates on sandy soils and in the southeast but more and more were with the Gulf of Mexico hypoxia situation and things of that nature the Midwest now where they use the most fertilizer it has become a focus so if he has this program education of really trying to put everything together and get you to think about these things and the way I like to put it I like to call it strategic nitrogen fertilization and I'll get into this a little bit more as I go on why I call it this but when we're looking at fertilizer especially nitrogen it's it's the source but it includes also the availability you know it's easy to say you should be using this source but if you can't get it that's not going to help you all right and price is also important and I'll talk about that a little bit another factor is trying to optimize the nitrogen rate okay gone are the days where we can put on that little bit of extra in case I need it all right we've got it what I like to talk about is hitting the bull's eye we need to get closer to that bull's eye as close to that bull's eye as we can with the correct rate and secondly that'll that'll maximize our economic returns because that's really what you want this is an input and if you talk to an ag economist you're trying to maximize output relative to inputs and fertilizer nitrogen is an input all right timing is is important and Steve addressed some of that earlier on we want to maximize and use efficiency one of those nutrients it can get away from us all right placement you've heard a little bit about that and I'll show you some of that and I'll talk a little bit about minimizing losses using these stabilizers inhibitors etc that are out there on the market most you have seen the the nitrogen cycle and I'm not going to test you on this later but you could see how nitrogen can be lost from a system depending on the source you use your rear and it's put on the surface some can be lost through ammonia volatilization use ammonium nitrate some of that nitrate on sandy highly permeable soils with a heavy rain you can lose significant amounts of your nitrate on the heavier soils the nitrate form can can denitrify so you can see nitrogen is susceptible to these these loss mechanisms so you do have to be wary about it all right you saw this graph earlier with with Steve just in a little bit different manner but you do need to understand your crop uptake demand by the crop but also when do I need to timely logistically get it in the field and it's easy to tell you you should apply it exactly at v3 well I work with growers in Mississippi Delta they may have three to six seven thousand acres or more corn and they're not going to do that in one day okay and then weather gets in the way to but you do have to be cognizant of this and of course your fields were not planted all the same day so you're going to try to follow that pattern you're going to get on your drier soils planted earlier and your wetter ones later so you do have to kind of have a good idea of the nutrient uptake pattern by your crop and so this just kind of shows corn I don't put any nitrogen in any of my studies I don't put it out pre-plant and I and I really try to get growers not in the Mississippi Delta especially not to put nitrogen out pre-plant we've had cotton farmers for years that would put out in especially anhydrous ammonia they would start real early February March some like to put a burn down out and they'll put some nitrogen in with that well the research we've done we've seen that they they're losing 30 to 50 60 pounds of that nitrogen that's expensive if they get rainfall prior to planting that crop so I usually plant my crop v3 or so I'll put that first split on and then v5 v6 v7 get that second split on so do understand that now let's look at here three states you know of course I'm working in Mississippi Alabama's just across the border and of course let's look at a corn producing state let's look at a state that grows 10 to 11 million acres of corn we think in Mississippi we grow a lot of corn at 800,000 acres okay now you look at what the growers in Illinois use what is their number one fertilizer in Illinois it's anhydrous ammonia over 600,000 tons of nitrogen that's not tons of fertilizer that's tons of the element nitrogen okay then there's almost 300,000 tons of nitrogen as end solutions but their number one fertilizer and as is anhydrous ammonia there's a reason for that okay and I and I'll show you that here in a little bit Mississippi we used to do a lot of anhydrous ammonia but we've gotten away with it besides the droggies and the equipment things and such like that it's just we've evolved to using nitrogen solutions all right yeah it's pretty crazy when somebody tries to break in an anhydrous ammonia tank I wouldn't touch one but you know I guess if you're high on drugs and you need some more you'll go for it crazy now look at Alabama though look at your nitrogen uses this is for 2012 this is the most recent data that is currently available y'all still love you know have that love affair with ammonium nitrate it's a great fertilizer I love ammonium nitrate to worse great spreadable about 34% and and nitrogen solutions come in about half that rate but still significant but just even look at your total and use compare Mississippi to Alabama you can tell the row crop situation in this state is a lot less and the corn is probably less than it is in in Mississippi we have the Delta course but neither of us compared Illinois all right so you see why they're the focus of this nutrients coming down the Mississippi River because they have drain tile and things like that and and some of that nitrogen leaks but moving on anhydrous ammonia of course is about 82% nitrogen doesn't have any water in it about five pounds per gallon four pounds of nitrogen per gallon it's a gas kept under pressure you know some of this stuff but you and your ammonium nitrate solution the 32% that we use in Mississippi there's 2.24 gallons of water per gallon of that our pounds of water excuse me per gallon of of material all right so 200 pounds of nitrogen applied to a field we've just dragged around 126 gallons of water around that field too all right ammonium nitrate popular fertilizer still in in Alabama of course it's prilled hygroscopic etc what i have down there the solutions have been caught in in the u.s. right now it's neck and neck each year between anhydrous ammonia and and solutions and one or two years and solutions have actually beat out anhydrous ammonia and that's what i call the price of convenience the liquids are more convenient anhydrous ammonia there's some hazards associated with it there's equipment specialized equipment etc but even that's changed because there's newer precision equipment with anhydrous ammonia that's really good really good all right now let's look at prices doesn't they seem to go up they they come down for a year or two and then they go back up you see about 1974 so when we had the oil embargo and we really had a oil prices jump given the current market of oil at 40 $50 a barrel right now fertilizer prices should be cheap right next spring joe right and we'll see how much they how long this lasts and if they do come down it's always been said that fertilizer prices are tied to oil prices of course natural gas is used to make fertilizer and the energy costs comprised by 80% of the cost to make a nitrogen fertilizer but understand this the US now imports more than 50% of its fertilizer nitrogen good for national security i don't think so all right but that's where we're at in the united states we used to make pretty much all our own nitrogen years ago and now we're dependent on foreign sources because our plants have gotten old we've mothballed them we've closed them down all right so here's price anhydrous ammonia they did jump up there or 809 and then then came down but then they're back up and but you can see the price per ton but i want to talk a little bit more specific here anhydrous ammonia in 2012 average $847 a ton that's 52 cents per pound of nitrogen okay your reammonium nitrate solution at 30% $400 a ton 68 cents per pound of nitrogen remember you're applying pounds of nitrogen okay that's what you're paying for urea 60 cents a pound of nitrogen you want to use ammonium nitrate 80 cents a pound ammonium nitrate okay for the nitrogen and ammonium nitrate so let's take cotton and as example average on red Mississippi somewhere around 100 pounds of then versus anhydrous ammonia ammonium nitrate well i have it as a negative because if you choose to use ammonium nitrate over anhydrous ammonia you've docked yourself $28 an acre from the get go okay corn at 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre anhydrous ammonia think of Illinois think of Illinois versus Alabama here they're using anhydrous ammonia versus ammonium nitrate you just docked yourself minus 56 dollars an acre in what you can make and profit compared to a grower in Illinois and that's why they use anhydrous ammonia besides the high-end content they don't have to haul as much around it is cheap is a cheap source of nitrogen and so i put this as in cotton when we switch from cotton to corn because the corn in Mississippi is going on cotton ground in the delta the best cotton ground is receiving the corn uh we basically it's less labor to grow the corn so we're trading labor costs what were once labor costs for that extra 100 pounds of nitrogen you know 52 to 80 dollars an acre we're putting it in in fertilizer getting the right rate you do with the with the source you do have to understand that there is an optimum rate for your fields field by field your soils i can't tell you exactly what that is and that's something you intuitively have as a grower you usually have a pretty good idea of and i found working with growers most of the time they they have a pretty good idea of what the field average is now they can't exactly spatially apply it to get it right but they know what the field average is now you see with this is just an example here uh monium nitrate maximizing growth somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds of van whereas look at you and in the upper right it's very efficient we reach we have we produced almost 200 bushel corn with about 150 pounds of that so there's your end use efficiency factor with urea it just seems like the graph and this is just one year but have done this uh for other years that urea just seems to keep keep going up you need more urea because of the losses involved with urea when you're using urea monium nitrate uh is better than your much better than urea and it's not as good as you am but it's close and it's efficiency as long as you don't get heavy rains after applying it and such on sandy soils and i know Mississippi state recommends about a pound and a quarter of nitrogen per bushel personally i don't recommend that i never see that and i'm somewhere around a pound of nitrogen per per bushel at the rates and yields that i'm in dry land corn all right let's talk about ink irrigation effects a little bit uh sprinkle irrigation of course sometimes you see puddling you know you try to get that water on that pivots moving slow you may have some more poorly drained areas or compacted areas in the field where you might see some puddling furrow irrigation of course is just that you're putting water in the furrow you're flooding it you used to be called flood irrigation but those furrows get flooded water moves nitrogen moves so one study we did is we wanted to know most of our growers it's much easier with the drivers that they have equipment etc is just put those coltors those knives right down in the middle of the furrow and that's where they run them and then they furrow irrigate on top of that so we wanted to just look at a simple study here six inches from the row banded urea ammonium nitrate 12 inches and 18 inches and when we looked at total incont... we cut whole plants at the end of the season when it was matured and look at the the end content and I've got surface dribbled is the the circles and then subsurface banded so I also have placement here whether it's on the surface or in the soil as well as distance from the row and so you see with subsurface banded it didn't make quite that much difference from 15 to 30 centimeters but definitely when we got out there in the furrow when we put that nitrogen out in the furrow we we dropped in total incontent by the plant whereas with the in the irrigated condition with the subsurface banded it didn't make uh I mean with the surface dribble did not make as much a difference and the non-irrigated treatments of course the end uptake was lower because of less water availability and seemed to make some trend for moving out further from the row that total incontent decreased and that was in 2011 2012 was a wetter year we had greater rainfall higher yields but we also had the potential for greater losses so once again with the subsurface band it didn't make quite the difference whether it was 15 to 30 centimeters but that 30 centimeters understand is still in the bed we we grow this on beds and so that is just on that edge of the bed where that 45 centimeters is out there in the furrow so you see with both treatments really a decline as we move further away from the row and the non-irrigated it was pretty dramatic also especially with the surface dribble that we had a decline in in total end uptake by the plant so we were also doing an n-15 study which is a fancy technique where we actually have a tracer on that nitrogen fertilizer that we put in the soil so we can actually follow the fertilizer that we put on and you can see the same effect with the subsurface banded as we move further from the row we decreased in n-15 recovery from about 58 percent to about 42 percent that's pretty significant loss there so the surface dribble did not matter quite as much that was in 2011 in 2012 however though with the greater rainfall i believe we had greater losses especially with that nitrogen out there in the furrow where it was susceptible to being wetter conditions and potential for denitrification so we went from high recoveries of 75 to 80 percent down to about 55 percent of our nitrogen well what did it do to yield well in 2011 you see that the trend there was most dramatic for the subsurface banded that we declined in yield what about 25 bushels is that significant that's a lot of bushels all right with the surface dribble not quite as much only about five or so bushels in the non-irrigated the decline was not as great the graphs are a little dramatic because i've got them i've got them blown up but really we're only looking at about an eight bushel decline though but i might say only eight bushels a grower might say hey you can give me eight bushels i'll take it in 2012 it was a little more significant as we move further out in the row with our nitrogen placement you know here's here's getting the you know you talk about the right source the right rate this is the right placement here is the further we get out in the row we lost about 40 bushels that's a lot of corn and that was with irrigation with the non-irrigated although we didn't make as high a yield the the decline there was about 40 35 40 bushels also all right okay we're moving off of that also we've looked at timing a little bit source and then nitrogen stabilizers and so these are the treatments that we have we have an untreated check where we don't put any nitrogen on a split 50 50 un a single application what we're looking at here is is can growers put on a one-shot when corn is at v3 v4 and walk away from that field for the most part for the season can they put the one round because they'll save in application costs and so we said well if they're doing a one-shot number four we added the n-serve nitri-prone which is really instinct by dow agro sciences and then number five is un plus the urease inhibitor and number six this is my made-up treatment of adding the n-serve and the instinct together put a nitrication inhibitor and the urease inhibitor together with the un and this is banded and then we had urea in there as a source untreated and with the urease inhibitor a lot of questions about whether to use agrotain or not i get phone calls on that all the time so in the leaf end content not a lot of difference difference between the years we didn't see these are ear leaves taken at uh when it was just starting to tassel at at vt so we don't see a lot of difference but between the treatments uh nitro pyrin or the n-serve a little bit of increase there in one year not the not the next year the n-b-t agrotain seemed to help a little bit with the un the combo didn't seem to make much difference but definitely when you add the n-b-b-t the agrotain to the urea with the last two treatments it definitely definitely makes a difference here both both years all right and that's just the nature of urea susceptible ammonia volatilization it's important to protect it when we look at whole end plant content we definitely uh we saw that splitting was more efficient if we split the end okay so this is a split application versus a hundred percent nitro pyrin seemed to help a little bit in the in the single but not much probably not enough to really maybe invest in it but then the agrotain we increased about 13 pounds or kilograms of nitrogen per hectare greater in in that treatment and then the combo added added another pound or so not big differences but definitely a trend uh urea is the most significant here if you're not going to protect that urea you may have trouble if it's just broadcast on the surface so you can see we're protecting urea with the agrotain made a big big big difference all right well what did that mean in yield not a lot and unfortunately sometimes this is what we see with these products we see greater end-use efficiency but not usually in too much in terms of yield the split application wasn't much better than the single application even though then use efficiency the uptake was a little bit greater uh uan with n serve didn't help uan with mbt didn't seem to help much but the combo together seemed to to increase yield about four bushels or so once again the biggest difference was urea unprotected and then urea protected and about a nine uh bushel increase or so definitely a difference if i choose using urea which cost me a lot more money over using uan all right how many in here use liquid urea ammonium nitrate solution says their primary end source hands show hands how many use dry like ammonium nitrate still uh urea anybody not many okay all right so to summarize this this what i'm calling strategic fertilizer management it costs money but nowadays it does it's not only that it costs money the epa is is looking at us and looking at growers and looking at that nitrogen and where it's going so we've got to improve the efficiency of it it costs a lot of money nitrogen you know it represents 35 to 40 percent of the input costs of growing corn in mississippi 200 our growers are using 240 pounds of nitrogen or so that's that's a lot of money so you know what else cost you that money that much money you know to produce that much yield boost irrigation maybe tillage doesn't we control maybe uh incident control probably not so for strategic application i believe can make a difference so in in the placement if you're using the liquids i believe that the closer you get it at least six to nine inches or so from the planted row will help you on about two three inches deep timing i've always recommended that the split application is an insurance policy you know i'm going to tell people that it only works about one two years out of ten years but it's you know those two years that you get that heavy rain or something and washes your nitrogen away that you're going to that you're going to have trouble so it is an insurance policy of splitting it and uh timing of course total money irrigation you adjust your rates relative to irrigation really what we're uh main focus of a lot of my research right now has been on variable rate fertilization and we're getting some really good results in that with with cotton and looking forward to moving more into doing some on-farm research with the corn model that we have uh inhibitors this is how i answer questions about inhibitors it's it's on a case by case basis are you no till you know i got to ask a lot of questions are you applying it no till is it late in the season or temperatures high of course they're using urea they have a high residue situation where you can have volatile losses placement etc all all important factors all important things to to think about and and i know it's a little bit complicated nitrogen's always the most difficult test exam in my class is that that uh exam number two the students fear nitrogen but but it's the one that costs you costs you quite a bit of money and then pee and and care right there with it so any questions i'd be happy to try and answer them if i have any i guess i have a couple of minutes here any questions yes sir evaluation there at the end where you showed the combination of the mbpt and the the instinct yes whatever um what's the cost differential to applying both of those inhibitors as opposed to applying only one of those that's a very pertinent question which i don't have the current costs of that and if anybody's here representing those products but you know each of them are going to be a couple dollars an acre two fifty to three dollars or more an acre well both of them together would probably be six seven dollars an acre or so yeah but if you consistently show uh three four bushel oh the break evens only going to be a couple bushels you're correct yeah so you you know it makes sense to put both of them in there most of the time it if you get that yield boost yes yeah with with with that uh by the utilization of both of those inhibitors could you then justify putting that nitrogen down all at one time so that it it spreads it out over a period time that's what that was that was a one-shot application and that's what we were trying to test if we're going to do that one shot and we're going to leave that fertilizer out there susceptible and prone to the hazards of weather and mother nature should we protect it and basically you know with two years of data i hope to get a third year of data because the more years we can get the better uh we can support uh our results and if you notice i didn't talk about statistics a lot because that that is in fact true and you know when talking to a grower and if you can tell them you can do this and you get five bushels they're probably going to do it so i leave the decision making up to the grower yes sir the the question is whether that inhibitor is tying up the nitrogen or not making it available now in the case of urea urea itself is not really available to the plant you know plant roots can take up small amounts of actual urea so you need that to transform first of all to the ammonium which a plant could take up ammonium and then to the nitrate form and that period in in lab studies that we've seen at the recommended rates depending on temperatures now if you plant corn and cool weather that temperature is going to slow it down to that transformation so if you put the combination of the inhibitor plus cool temperatures uh it's a two three week period that it really inhibits that slows that process it's never a hundred percent stops that process okay so you've got to think about it you know corn plant this big isn't using much nitrogen and there's some nitrogen available from the soil so in terms of what i would say tying it up i don't think it's a i would not guess that it's a big factor there especially if it would timely was done early v3 before within two three weeks when it warms up that stuff should be you saw the growth curves it should be mineralite nitrifying and and matching that the demand that's what you're trying to do is match that demand so you have to decide on that your application time but it's a couple days 10 to 14 days is pretty good on their literature or what they say and what i've seen in lab studies and such it but cool temperatures will slow it down yes sir that is knifed at about eight nine inches is where i have my colter set and about two three inches deep yes sir this is not flat ground these are uh it is it's it's no till but it's on the remnants of conventional till we typically hip up make beds knock them down in conventional till and generally when i go into no till i'm going into that situation i like to have a little bed there it is furrow so you have to have beds you know you have to have some kind of furrow to furrow irrigate would you expect the same kind of difference in the fertilizer place but till situation that's a great irrigation that's a great distinction you know because on flat ground you're not going to have that as much but you're still going to have wheel tracks and things of that nature where you could have some problems say from overhead irrigation you know you're going to have some slight undulations that that could cause some of these problems some wet spots but probably not as great this was really for this is the research was really designed for Mississippi Delta furrow irrigated which most of our growers now are going back to furrow they're getting rid of the pivots by the way the pivots are old they didn't put out since now they're in corn they don't put out enough water for corn the older technology so they're scrapping them and and unbelievably we're going back to furrow irrigation and polypipers made that you know easy for them anything else if not appreciate your attention this morning thank you