Just priced fertilizer..WOW!!!

I work in my daughter's feed store and it is hard having to tell our customers how much feed and fertilizer have gone up just about every week. Triple 13 is $590 per ton and Ammonia is $600 per ton. We sell a lot of horse and chicken feed and it is rediculous how it has gone up in the last few months. The thing is some of our customers believe it is just us raising prices because we want to. I had one customer tell me the other day that we were going to price ourselves out of business and another who said we should sell our products for just what we pay for them. I told him, if we did that he would not have a store to go to to purchase his feed because we could not pay the rent and other bills. I know they just need someone to take their frustrations out on but it is hard.

Or it may be time to get onto a rotation of some nitrogen fixing plants and deep rooting ones which will bring up minerals from the sub soil. Definately something I am going to start experimenting with. In my area once you get a good stand of crimson clover and let it go to seed it is virtually self perpetuating from year to year and will even come up the second year if you crop the area in between.- thats a lot of virtually free nitrogen.

Black Kow is the same price at the local produce and feed store for the last 3 years, $3.95 per 50 pound bag.

Some would say that 50 pounds of Black Kow is only equal to 5 pounds of 10-10-10 but I find it is much more equivalent.

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Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money, monopoly
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World pollution is no solution

A very light spreading of compost, on a cloudy day, tilled in within hours, can do a world of good. The increased bacterial and enzyme presence and activity does amazing things for making locked up nutrients available to plants, as well as balancing pH and tempering moisture extremes.
Start now while materials are still available.

Rye, seeded in the fall and plowed under when it is 16-24 inches tall, incorporates a surprising amount of organic matter into the soil, loosening clay soils and tightening sand. It can also be plowed under after harvesting, in July, and followed with soybeans for a light crop or to make soy hay.
Or, you could follow rye with buckwheat and take a crop of the latter before tilling it in. Green buckwheat, plowed in, makes phosphoric acid much more available.
Obviously, the legumes incorporate literal tons of nitrogen into the soil, plowed in or left for hay crop for a few years.
ANY organic matter that can be procured and worked in will pay dividends down the road.

The trouble, of course, is the sequential following of the chemical application/farm loan dependence for big new equipment/corn and beans only
pied piper that has been leading otherwise intelligent people down a subtle road to destruction, long antecedent to this generation appearing on the scene.
Who among the commercial farmers can afford to do the right thing with their soil at this point ?

Black Kow can not be sold as a fertilizer since it does not contain at least 1% of any NPK nutrients. Cow manure analysis is about 0.6-0.2-0.5 for NPK values. Total available plant nutrients would be 1.3%. 50# of Black Kow would thus contain 0.65# of NPK. 50# of 10-10-10 would have 15# of NPK while 5# would contain 1.5#. Thus it would take about 100# of Black Kow to equal 5# of 10-10-10.

Martin

makes "farm gold" all the more precious a resource! may have too arm our tanker drivers!

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

Ford Major my crop consultant friend has a client in Uxbridge who's trucking chicken manure from London, so 3+ hours, for corn ground. He's paying for the manure plus the trucking. Can't find any closer and it JUST pencils out at that distance.

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

Conventional farmers, especially those who have already contracted to sell this year's crop for relatively high prices, are probably going to use more fertilizer this year than usual because this year they anticipate more bang for the buck.

With the increase in grain prices and production can grains be grown effeciently without chemical fertilizers? It was always my understanding corn was a very heavy feeder and required a fair amount of fertilization.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

Depends upon what you want to call efficient, getting enough to feed a few hogs and chickens for yourself or have something to sell. Nebraska is one of the 4 states which grows more than 50% of the US corn. Average per acre in 1900 was 26 bushels per acre. Worn out soils reduced that to 21 in 1940. By 2000, it was 126. Last year, 2007, was 160.

Martin

10 10 10 is $390.00 a ton here

19 19 19 is $635.00 a ton here

It is just going up and up and up. It does make us folks have to start doing serious thinking what to do next as far as farming lifestyle changes.

First we had to deal with this drought and hay shortages here this winter and now fertilizer going through the roof.

That song "country folks can survive is going through my mind"

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Live simply,love generously,care deeply,speak kindly, and leave the rest to God

there are other factors that make any manure or food waste valuable! best use for municipal biosolids i have seen is land application, brought a stripped acidic farm back too life, better than before the topsoil and sand/gravel was removed

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

Just heard on the news that the farmers are planting less corn this year and more soybeans. Second lowest number of acres planted since 1949. The cost of fertilizer was the main reason.

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If the grass looks greener it is probably over the septic tank. - troy n sarah tx

Our existance here is soley for the expoitation of CMG

As Edcopp referred to the use of chemical fertilizers, consider how these ammendments are made and with what. Oil and gas based petrochemical products.

Perhaps another argument for the "peak Oil" crowd.

One of the reasons we originally started raising livestock, aside from wanting quality meat, was to get fertilizer for our gardens. Around here it is very hard to find good ----. The farmers who do produce manure spread it on their own fields. I don't want manure that is filled with chemicals, antibiotics, etc which makes it even harder. Having our own herds of animals means we get valuable manure. The sun grows the grass and the animals turn it into fertilizer for our gardens and high quality meat for us to eat.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

There is no N-P-K in oil. The only thing that you can get directly from petroleum is sulfur which may also be salvaged from coal. Potash comes from the ground. Phosphorus comes from rock phosphate. Nitrogen comes from the air. It is the later which is reliant on a lot of energy to produce and the bulk of it comes from natural gas.

Martin

I remember when I lived back east, there were trucks that used to run across the hay fields and spray sludge on them. It was amazing to see how quick the fields would green up! I bet that was some cheap fertilizer, but for a few days, it sure stunk to high heaven until the rain came in.
Is that still done anywhere?

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Joy at Secretplace Farm

Couldn't agree with you more, Tom!

Unfortunately, quite a few folks living in asphalt jungles will have to cut lots of extra notches in their belts, assume the 'concentration camp' look (stylish! if you're a runway model), or simply curl up and die.

Billions of extra people are on this planet, because food and fuel have been cheap. When the price is out of their reach, for whatever reason (or, worse, if it's Just Not There [no food])they'll have to die.

Speaking of indentured servants... I wonder how much 're-education' will need to take place, to retrain (mentally/physically) the typical white collar worker (or anyone living in a city... in an airconditioned building) to backbreaking labor, from dawn to after dusk, working with a short handled hoe, in the fields... all for a small bowl of porridge, and dry corner of the barn to sleep in.

Civilization, as we know it, is based on cheap fuel (fertilizer) and almost free food. Without it, Civilization, AWKI, falls...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Almost wenty years ago when we were looking for fertilizer, prior to having livestock to generate our own manure, I did find that I could get sludge fertilizer from the city sewer sprayed on our fields. They were desperate to find farmers willing to let them. I'm glad I never did, tempting as the free fertilizer would have been. City sludge is filled with antibiotics, medications, chemicals, toxic waste, disease and other stuff that people dump down their drains.

Recent studies have shown this to be a really bad idea. It is sad that people can't be more careful and just put their manure and ---- down the toilets but they treat the sewer system as a disposal for everything.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

We are about the only country that doesn't do it on a widespread basis. Virtually all of our food is a one-way trip from the soil to a landfill somewhere. When that happens, it doesn't take long for there to be nothing left to take out. Doesn't work well when there are more and more mouths to feed every day. A number of large cities have invested in systems to convert sewage to fertilizer with Milwaukee, WI being one of the first. The few new ones have been started in recent years have been very expensive to build and thus the one-way trip continues.

Martin