Course Recommendation: Foliar Nitrogen
Learn how to make reduced chemical applications work in cropping systems.
A new course from an old friend: Joel Williams
It’s clear through government programs and other signals, that society is demanding agriculture in Canada reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fertilizers. For years, Joel Williams has been working with hundreds of farms in western Canada and around the world, who have accomplished this and more, without sacrificing profit or yield.
Joel will be sharing how this works based on science and global case studies, in a new course called ‘Foliar Nitrogen’. Click here to learn more: https://www.integratedsoils.com/foliar-nitrogen.html, and consider registering quickly because it is filling up fast.
This course will be great for farmers and consultants who are ready to start activating curiosity and implementing past learnings onto actual fields. CCA credits will be available, and it’s being held live in 3 time zones, creating a global platform for professional learning, connecting, and community-building.
In a world where new soil amendments and biologicals are showing up everywhere, with grand promises, there is understandable skepticism about the performance of substitutes for chemical inputs from alternative products. It’s not straightforward. As Joel often references, there are three stages to systems change: efficiency, substitution, and redesign.
Foliar Nitrogen will set the stage for much-improved nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in broadacre cropping systems. In many cases, it is premature for a farm to jump right from business-as-usual in fertilizer decision-making, into reductions and/or substitute biological products, before all the boundaries of efficiency gains are explored and understood. One marker of success of farmers who successfully reduce nitrogen reliance, is to experiment with ‘melted urea’ and other liquid systems, before venturing into more complicated applications like biologicals, biostimulants, and compost.
The journey is long for anyone schooled in conventional agriculture to understand the interactions between soil biology, and how it changes the availability of nutrients to plants, without replacing all of the nutrients taken up by the previous crop. But this is a real and fascinating part of the evolution of agriculture that clarifies the path to reducing pollution caused by the escape of nutrients and chemicals from conventional field management systems.
I never thought there'd come a day when I'd feel so excited about taking a course in plant and soil chemistry - but here we are. Hope to see you there!