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Test fertilizer spreaders for application accuracy
Nutrient management specialist Peter Scharf says poorly adjusted fertilizer spreaders result in lost corn yield. Scharf – at the University of Missouri – says a spreader putting on too little fertilizer robs nutrients from the crop.
“If you put on more than what it needs, then it was a waste of a resource, but at least the crop is going to have enough to do its job,” said Scharf, in an interview with Brownfield Ag News during the Crop and Soil Management Workshop at the University of Missouri’s Bradford Research Center.
Testing is done by driving the spreader over catch pans and measuring what actually comes out of the machine and where it lands. Scharf says research confirms that inadequate and uneven spreader output will cut into a grower’s bottom line.
“In several of the fields that we’ve looked at there’s been a measurable yield penalty,” said Scharf. “In one, 14 bushels, and another field, eight bushels of corn because we were really limiting yield at those low points in the pattern.”
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