The Importance of Optimizing Fertilizer

Growers face tough decisions about where to prioritize their fertilizer dollars for maximum return. Crop Nutrition week begins today and runs through Friday, and is designed to help growers optimize their approach to the 2026 growing season. AgroLiquid Agronomist Stephanie Zelinko talked about the things to watch out for this year and how Crop Nutrition Week can help growers prepare.

“Like any growing season, you know, growers have to be very conscious of what dollars they're spending for their crop and making sure that aligns with that potential return that they're going to get. And so what our hopes are with Crop Nutrition week is we're going to cover a lot of these different factors, of things like soil interaction, fertilizer placement, timing, and environmental conditions, and all of those things that ultimately influence that nutrient availability and uptake to the plant. And once you know those nutrient factors, then you can be responsible with those fertilizer dollars and making sure that we're always going to get that return.”

Zelinko talked about the biggest opportunity for growers looking to maximize their fertilizer return on investment.

“There's a lot of missing pieces that can be in that soil test. So if you're missing something like manganese or boron, those can actually play a bigger part in that overall fertilizer response that you're going to see in the crop than just apply and, say, more nitrogen or phosphorus.”

Once again, the AgroLiquid Crop Nutrition week runs now through Friday for information. Go to cropnutritionweek.com