Activating Soil Microbes to Help With Fertilizer Costs

Activating Soil Microbes to Help With Fertilizer Costs

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with you Farm of the Future Report.

In a year when fertilizer prices and shortages have made headlines, managing nutrient use efficiency is of the utmost importance. Jeff Divan is the director of agronomy at Sound agriculture and a grower himself.

Divan… “Growers are really in tune with the cost of nitrogen prices this season and depending on how efficiently they're using something like nitrogen, it is possible to reduce how much is applied.”

Divan said that natural nitrogen fixing bacteria and phosphate stabilizing microbes can be leveraged for increased yield and plant health.

Divan… “Over the past few decades, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus being applied to the soil has caused plants to rely less on microbes for bioavailable forms of these nutrients and lead to a reduction of microbial contributions. We know that there's over 100 million microbes in a gram of soil, so there's a great deal of untapped potential out there.”

And that is what Sound Ag is attempting to do with their SOURCE product.

Divan… “So, we can start to supplement with products that improve nutrient cycling, and that's a great option to leverage the power of existing microbes that are available in your soil. So, our technology at sound activates soil microbes and essentially wakes them up to provide more nitrogen and phosphorus to the plant.”

Learn more at Sound.Ag.

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