Program challenges farming norm

EUREKA, Ill. — Yield/Profit Challenge has eight years of on-farm trial data in the books to document which systems provide the best return on investment for crop production.

Trent Nicholson, owner of Yield/Profit Challenge and a Pro-Soil Ag Solutions dealer, recently hosted a plot tour where trials ranged from check strips to full programs.

Lynn Hoover, Pro-Soil national field adviser and owner of Ocean Blue Agronomics, partnered with Nicholson to lead the plot tour.

Nicholson works with product lines from companies including Ocean Blue Ag, Sea-90, Atlantic Pacific Ag, Pro-Soil Ag, Calcean and Kugler Fertilizer, finding ways to challenge the norm to ultimately achieve greater profitability.

The foundation for all corn and soybean trials is a base package of 120 pounds of monoammonium phosphate dry spread.

Additional natural soil nutrition and liquid plant food products are added in each strip separately or in combination to compare yield, input costs and ROI.

Products used include Sea-90, Pro-Soil’s IPS 100, Micro Pac, Power Pro, Nutri-Shield, Liquid Sea Minerals, Aragonite and others from natural sources.

“Our highest return on investment in the 2024 plots was doing the Sea-90, the IPS 100 and Nutri-Shield together. As far as what you spent to buy that program versus what you got back from it, that was probably the best return in both corn and soybeans. That’s what we call our core program,” Nicholson said.

“From there we can just add more and more (products) until you get to our full program, which has about a 49-bushel average response for corn over the past nine years. We typically see a good ROI on that, but it’s just you have to spend more to get more.”

The full program includes the base of 120 pounds of MAP, applied to all trials, Nutri-Shield 64 ounces in-furrow, Pro-Soil’s IPS 100 32 ounces pre-plant, Sea-90 100 pounds dry spread, Aragonite 700 pounds dry spread, Elevation 64 ounces V4 foliar, Micro Pak 32 ounces V4 foliar, 178 C 1 gallon foliar, and Nutri-Shield 64 ounces VT foliar.

Over eight years of data, the full program averaged an ROI of $120 per acre.

In 2024, the core program with Sea-90, IPS 100, Nutri-Shield costs about $40 per acre if no other nutrients need replaced and had a $72 per acre ROI.

Input Savings

“Fertilizer prices are high right now. We’re trying to help farmers save money where they can, and we feel like we have the solutions to do that,” Nicholson said.

“Doing the Sea-90 and the Pro-Soil together, that’s going to save you quite a bit versus just the regular program.

“We can make phosphorus more available using just the Pro-Soil. So, you spend $10 on that and cut $30 out of your fertilizer program and you save a bunch of money right there.”

“Our Pro-Soil product is a biostimulant that has been proven to increase phosphate availability as high as 47%. So, there’s significant advantages in savings there,” Hoover added.

“Then with the sea minerals, the sea salts, that’s going to replace at least half of your potassium and, in some case, all your potassium. It will replace dry phosphate availability, as well. It also helps to drive the natural nitrogen cycle, at least as high as 40 pounds, and we have ways to measure to see if it can do more than that.”

Getting Started

As with trying any new product or farming practice, it’s best to start small before jumping all in.

“With our products, whatever is causing you the most problem on your farm, maybe that’s a low yield or it could be compaction, that would be the first place I would say to start trying our products because it’s where the greatest opportunity to improve is,” Hoover said.