How Many Pounds of Water Does One Bushel Take?

from Growing the Future · host Elston Solberg, Dan Aberhart

Water drives everything in dryland agriculture, and Elston Solberg opens this Farm Forum session by asking the room how many pounds of it a single bushel actually takes. The answer reframes every fertility decision that follows. Solberg, co-founder of EarthDirtSoil and part of the Crop Intelligence team, spends this session connecting nutrient chemistry to what a producer can see standing in a field. His argument is that recipes do not work, that balance between nutrients matters more than the rate of any one of them, and that most of what limits a crop was decided by water long before anyone opened a fertilizer bin. What's Inside - Why fertilizer use has been flat since the mid eighties while yields kept climbing, and what that has quietly done to the phosphorus, potassium and sulphur left in your soil - The difference between soil mobile and plant mobile nutrients, and why that distinction changes where and when you place them rather than how much you buy - What boron actually does to a root system, including the potassium uptake multiplier and the few degrees of heat tolerance it buys - Why 13.5 percent protein is the number that tells you whether you optimized for the water you actually had - What a single percent of organic matter holds, in pounds of water and in pounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and boron - Why a cold Western Canadian spring makes phosphorus placement more consequential than phosphorus rateConnect with Growing the Future Website: growingthefuture.ca YouTube: Growing the Future Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast LinkedIn: Growing the Future Subscribe to the Growing the Future Podcast wherever you listen, and register for Convergence Conference 2027 at convergence.ag. Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Mar 2, 2020

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What this episode covers

Recorded at Farm Forum Event 2019, this session features Elston Solberg, co-founder of EarthDirtSoil and part of the Crop Intelligence team, building a case that water, not any single input, sets the ceiling on a dryland crop. He works through the split between soil mobile and plant mobile nutrients, what boron does to roots and to heat tolerance, what a percent of organic matter is actually holding, and why protein at 13.5 percent tells a producer whether they optimized for the moisture they had. The tension running under it is that fertilizer use across the Prairies has been flat since the mid eighties while yields climbed, which means the reserves in the soil have been quietly drawn down. Producers walk away with a way to read a field that does not depend on following anyone's recipe.