Nitrogen Is a Strange.

Soil Fertility Services Ltd
2 hours ago
2 min read

Let me ask you a few questions.

If I told you that nitrogen fertiliser was inefficient, would you still use it?

If I told you the price might change tomorrow, would you still buy it?

If I told you that next year there would be additional taxes or regulations on nitrogen fertiliser, would you buy more now to avoid them?

And if grain prices were unlikely to improve, would you still apply the same rate of nitrogen this season?

Because that, more or less, is the situation farming finds itself in.

For many growers, nitrogen fertiliser is an essential input. No one disputes that. But the way it behaves economically is slightly unusual.

It is inefficient in the soil.

It is volatile in price.

It is increasingly politically sensitive.

And the crop you are applying it to may or may not cover the cost.

Yet the standard approach is still largely the same.

Buy it early. Apply roughly the same rate as last year. Hope the maths works out.

Historically, that worked because nitrogen fertiliser was relatively stable. Gas prices were predictable, supply chains were reliable, and the cost of nitrogen sat within a range that farming could absorb.

That stability is disappearing.

Nitrogen fertiliser prices now move with global energy markets. Policy pressure around nitrogen losses is increasing. And crop prices are rarely guaranteed to rise alongside input costs.

Which means the real question is no longer simply how much nitrogen to apply.

The real question is how much of your nitrogen strategy you want to leave exposed to markets you cannot control.

Because a surprising amount of the nitrogen crops require has always been sitting in the soil system already. Or just above it in the atmosphere.

The challenge has never been the total quantity of nitrogen available.

The challenge has been how efficiently we access it.

This is where biological nitrogen fixation starts to make sense.

Products like Bio-N work differently from fertilisers. Instead of importing nitrogen produced from natural gas, Bio-N encourage soil microbes to convert atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available forms directly in the soil.

In simple terms, they allow the crop to tap into a nitrogen source that is already present, rather than relying entirely on nitrogen bought from the global fertiliser market.

Which means Bio-N is not really about replacing fertiliser entirely.

It is about making the farm's nitrogen system a little less dependent on everything happening outside the farm gate.

Nitrogen fertiliser will always have a place in farming.

But relying on it entirely, in a world of volatile energy markets and tightening regulation, is becoming a risky strategy.

Steve Holloway.

Technical Manager.

Bio-N is applied from 10ltrs per ha.

Costing from £27.50 per ha.

Typical applications:

Winter cereals 2 x 10 ltrs per ha.

Spring cereals 1 x 10 ltrs per ha.

OSR 1 x 20 ltrs per ha.