Why Soil Sampling Matters

With the rising cost of fertilizer in the past year and no relief in sight, soil sampling has never been more important. There will be many conversations about where production costs can be reduced without sacrificing yield. Soil sampling gives agronomists a baseline understanding of current soil fertility levels and helps establish what is needed to achieve your crop goals. Once that baseline is established, agronomists can calculate the products and application rates needed to meet your yield targets for the year.  Sampling is recommended every four years to monitor changes in potassium, phosphate, pH, and organic matter levels.

Conventional sampling is the cheapest and easiest method used to establish a baseline fertility. Using the results from recommended five acre or smaller sample areas, our agronomists can create a fertilizer plan tailored to your yield goals. While this method is simple and effective, it often relies on data from multiple samples, and sometimes multiple fields, to create broad recommendations across many acres. As a result, it does not provide field-specific precision that grid sampling can offer.

Grid sampling allows samples to be taken from precise locations within five acre or smaller grids, with acreage customized to meet your specific needs. These same sampling points are used each time a field is sampled, making it easy to track changes in soil fertility over time. Because many growers are focused on building and maintaining fertility levels, grid sampling also allows us to create variable-rate application maps. While this approach may cost slightly more upfront, it enables fertilizer to be applied where it is needed most. Higher rates can be placed in high-producing areas, while lower-yielding portions of the field receive only what is necessary, all in a single pass across the field. 

Work with your agronomist in the month of August to review your soil fertility and develop a plan for any sampling that is needed this fall. Now is the time to start thinking about next year’s crop and the strategies that can help navigate these challenging times. With some nitrogen already becoming available, along with upcoming fall fertilizer and seed pricing, we can begin evaluating options and identify ways to best fit your needs.