Corn farmers watch the price of nitrogen almost as closely as the price of corn. Fortunately, the present boost in corn prices more than compensated for increased nitrogen costs this season—as long as the weather cooperates and delivers the moisture needed to harvest the intended yields.
 

 Corn Belt farmers have a new tool to evaluate the relationships between corn and nitrogen prices—the Nitrogen Rate Calculator developed by extension specialists in Iowa and Illinois. It can be found on the Iowa State University Web site at <a href="http://extension.agron.iastate.edu/soilfertility/nrate.aspx" target="_blank">http://extension.agron.iastate.edu/soilfertility/nrate.aspx</a>. "You input the price of nitrogen and the price of corn, and it will calculate the expected maximum rate of return," says Emerson Nafziger, extension agronomist at the University of Illinois and one of the developers of the calculator. "It does a rate of return curve and suggests the range of nitrogen rates that would be most profitable." The calculator includes nitrogen response data from Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Other states may soon be added. "It's been helpful as these prices have changed so much lately," Nafziger says. "A year ago when nitrogen was high and corn wasn't, it would have suggested [nitrogen rates] that are considerably less than what it would take today."
 
 On the western edge of the Corn Belt, farmers were strongly encouraged to base their fertilization decisions on soil nitrate tests from this past spring, says Jim Gerwing, South Dakota State University soils specialist. Last summer's dry conditions brought lower corn yields and a higher carryover of nitrates in the soil. Tests averaged 98 pounds of available nitrogen in the soil per acre. While soil nitrate testing is a key management tool in the drier western portions of the Corn Belt, Gerwing explains it isn't done further east, where the higher rainfall amounts tend to leech available nitrates from the soil.
 
 The biggest change in the nitrogen market in the past few years has been the shift of fertilizer production offshore. Until recently, nearly all the nitrogen used by Corn Belt farmers was produced in the United States, with anhydrous ammonia being the preferred choice. When oil prices went up, the price of all forms of nitrogen made from ammonia went up, stimulating the development of fertilizer production in the oil fields of Russia and the Middle East, Gerwing says. Where natural gas was once burned off, it is now economical to capture the gas and use it to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer. That, in turn, favors urea, a granular form of nitrogen far easier to ship around the world than anhydrous ammonia.
 
 "More than half the nitrogen we use is being shipped from overseas," Gerwing says. "It's a world market now, and market demand is driving prices more than the price of energy or natural gas." Increased fertilizer demand in China and India now affects U.S. farmers' nitrogen costs. In the late 1990s, the price for urea was 18 to 21 cents per pound of actual nitrogen, and the price of anhydrous ammonia was 12 to 13 cents per pound of actual nitrogen, he says. A decade later, those prices have doubled. 
 
 In South Dakota, urea broadcasting has become the fertilizer system of choice, Gerwing says, because farmers in the western two-thirds of South Dakota have shifted to no-till practices. Knifing in anhydrous ammonia requires more tillage than desired, he explains.
 
 In Illinois, anhydrous ammonia is still the dominant fertilizer, Nafziger says. "Urea is coming, but we have an infrastructure built around anhydrous. Pipelines bring anhydrous ammonia in, and nothing else can be shipped that easily or economically."

Nitrogen Costs up; Urea Gains

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North American SAF Conference & Expo

Nitrogen Costs up; Urea Gains