Can Agricultural Producers Survive a Future with Significantly Less Fertilizer or One with No Fertilizer at All?
The article "A Future Without Fertilizer?" that appeared on agweb.com on April 13, 2022 summarized what producers are realizing for the 2023 crop year: "Pressure from costs, availability, regulations, and environmentalists continue to squeeze synthetic fertilizer into a complicated future. Today farmers simply have limited alternatives. Tomorrow, the answer might be much different."
Since 1955, the message to farmers from Growers Mineral, Corp. has been that profitable crop production can be achieved with a lower volume of fertilizer input than is suggested by the agricultural establishment. The idea of growing crops with a small amount of applied fertilizer has been received for many years with the response, "You can't grow a crop with that dinky amount of fertilizer." Also, if you do grow the crop with a small amount of added fertilizer, the establishment contends that the land will eventually "wear out."
In the article "Fertilizer Sales May Prompt Farm Ruin" which appeared in the December 17, 1966 edition of the Norwalk Reflector, Dr. V.A. Tiedjens addressed this type of producer mentality: "Success for any industry in the modern economy is based on ascending sales curve. Yet, in the opinion of Dr. V.A. Tiedjens, a local soil scientist who, himself, earns part of his living from the sale of fertilizers, the ascending curve of the U.S. fertilizer industry is bringing about the ruination of American farmers and possibly their farms.
"Dr. Tiedjens is not opposed to fertilizer, chemical or organic. He does not hold with those who contend that it is harmful to human health. But he vigorously objects to the prevailing manner in which it is applied, the illusion that has been created that it is the cure-all for an adequate food supply, the dominance the industry exerts over agricultural research, and the stranglehold it has on the American farmers' thinking."
So as farmers approached the 2022 crop season, some operations have been spared the catastrophic run-up of fertilizer prices. However, on the horizon is the possibility that all producers will have to deal with extravagant prices for fertilizer. Will high commodity prices come to the rescue, or does high commodity prices solve the problem if the weather does not allow profitable yields by only supplying a submarginal environment?
The problem of high fertilizer prices has been a source of discussion recently in many different medias. These various discussions have led to possible suggestions that the agricultural establishment had deemed not necessary in the past.
However, in recent years agriculture has been pressured to reduce fertilizer usage by the environmental movement. The amount of accountability for agriculture has been related to the size of dead zones, algae concentrations, nitrate numbers, and carbon dioxide accumulations. With these various issues occupying the thoughts of consumers, politicians contend that fertilizer shortages will finally force farmers to "hasten transitions" to "natural solutions" for fertilizer.
Growers Mineral, Corp. has suggested for many years that the ideas of Dr. V.A. Tiedjens would allow the agricultural producer to deal with these various issues while still being economically viable. With the current atmosphere surrounding agricultural fertilization, various research is occurring that suggests Dr. V.A. Tiedjens was very much ahead of his time. Many new start-up companies today are focusing on the use of biostimulants and their relationships to various chemical elements. Also, plant responses to mineral element usage is focusing on both mineral purity and mineral balance when exposing the plant to those minerals. These recent scientific discoveries only confirm the principles that Dr. Tiedjens used to create GMS (Growers Mineral Solutions) and The Growers Program.
Dr. V.A. Tiedjens' legacy to agricultural production can help any producer today overcome the fear of crop fertilization problems which were created by industry executives and political leader.
This is an excerpt from the Early Fall Growers Solution (2022) written by Jim Halbeisen, Director of Research.
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