What are your thoughts on the fertiliser price s for 2022

Usually only need about 10ac or so for maize, so it will be a small enough fraction of the outblock.

Maize.

I don’t know of any crop that yields so much grain/forage with such a short growing season. In 90-120 days it can yield 6t/ac of dried grain without any fungicides or pesticides. The French say that all it needs is ‘feet in water and head in the sun’.

With such a short growing season it doesn’t need the amount of fertilizer that ye’re talking about. Not anywhere near it! Just because of its spectacular efficiency in producing huge crops, merchants must be using the excuse that you can’t have the output without the input??

Sowing rates.

There’s two limitations on growing maize. Sun and water. I’ve the sun and ye’ve the water…

When my land type or lack of irrigation is going to limit the crop, I reduce seed rates. I think ye should do likewise to maximize production/quality due to lack of sun.

The reason I planted the ‘Irish’ type maize at 69k and 111k/ha was that the drill wouldn’t go any higher or lower seed rates!

Its all about the cob! In forage maize at 33%DM, 55% of the weight of the forage is grain. The height of the forage crop should only be taken into account as a function of the size of the cob..objective being 35% energy. This only matters to those who are feeding a maize based diet. Therefore, the amount of grain per cob/acre should be your ONLY objective because ye’re using it as an energy buffer (bought energy replacement) forage.

Again on fertilizer. Nobody in their right mind would give sbarley the same fert as wbarley, even though the sbarley can often way outyield the winter barley. Rule of thumb with any crop, the shorter the growing season, the less nutrition needed.

There is usually a massive amount stockpiled outside in new ross and bellview before spring. Haven't passed either in a longtime so no idea if it's building up or not

https://twitter.com/rashidmq/status/1451460038216896514?s=21

Wonder what humic acid is costing in bulk, might have good potential if it could be gotten at a reasonable price.

They will have to look after there regular cusomers or they will lose them.

Lads that price half the country every year could be in troble. Although money talks.

I know if it was after dropping in price the co ops would tell you they had it all bought beforehand.

Never seen a rat eating fertilizer

It must vary for different merchants/locations. Around here it would all be stored in merchants yards and delivered from there to the farmer. I don't think I've ever seen a load being delivered straight from the plant.

Grennans in rath would have hundreds of tons stored outdoors over the winter normally. I must take a trip around that way some day to see how much (or how little!) is there this year!

When you add the energy it takes to grow the maize, the tillage ,the fertilizer and manure ,the diesel energy to harvest and draw the crop to the ad plant , +the energy of running the digester plant itself,and then burning the gas to make electricity , then it's more energy used than you get out of it ..

It can be a good thing when you're using a "waste" product - or are using animal slurry , and especially if you have a use for any ",waste " heat , or low grade methane -

It’s like one of the laws in physics-you can’t create or destroy energy, only convert it from one form to another.

when all is counted, you’d wonder is there much of an addition to energy supplies, like you said when fert, diesel, electricity needed for the plant itself is all counted, what’s the positive outcome.

in all of these debates, the biggest issue is population growth. Where will it stop? Will it stop? Mother Nature has a way of looking after that throughout history, you’d fear what or when it’ll happen again. Or without getting into a debate, was COVID her attempt at doing so but modern medicine is keeping the world population above where it should be.

Glad I'm not the only one thought that.. Only had that discussion with the father this morning about population and covid.

So far!

Its been well researched by now that the world population will peak at something between 9 and 11 billion in the later part of the 21st century. As a country comes out of poverty, the women become alot better educated and family planning is generally widespread, and family sizes very quickly drop to an average of less than 2 children, which it is right now in most of the higher income countries, and places like China that took on radical one child policies. At this stage you get another big problem, the pension timebomb, where you have too many old retired people and not enough people working to support them lol.

We didn't we used one of the hardest lockdowns in the developed world to suppress the virus and protect the productive section of the economy and scraficed a lot of the entertainment, food and drink sector. We protected those working in those areas from the worst of these effect by enhanced unemployment benefits.

We still are not out of it but hopefully we will not need another lockdown to get us through this winter. However this is up to people individually, by being vaccinated and acting with a certain amount of responsibility.

Well I don't think any of us will volunteer to be culled, so suppose as a race we will need to figure out how we can all fit on this planet in some sort of harmony..don't know if we are all philosophical this weekend but similar theme running on a few threads now..ha