With fertilizer costs likely to remain sky high this growing season, many growers are looking to save money by cutting fertilizer applications.

AEA’s precision nutrition management and regenerative systems can allow for serious and sustainable reductions in inputs as soil biology takes over the burden of supplying a crop’s fertility.

But be careful!

• This doesn’t happen immediately: it takes thoughtful planning.
• A poorly managed nutrition protocol can be disastrous.

The good news is we’re here to help. We’ve helped thousands of growers to drastically reduce their fertilizer inputs.

Off-Ramp for Chemistry, On-Ramp for Biology

Our ultimate goal is to empower soil biology to provide most or all of a crop’s nutrition.

• But transitioning into that model from a chemistry-intensive system is tricky.

The problem is that soluble synthetic fertilizers are very detrimental to soil biology, so, at the beginning of the transition, the biology isn’t strong enough to

One reason why is their high salt index.

Have you ever gotten fertilizer (or salt) in a cut on your hand? Did it burn? That feeling is cellular oxidation, and also happens to biology in the soil when they get hit with a large dose of fertilizer.

This leads us to the essential questions of a regenerative fertilizer reduction:

1. How can we supply adequate fertility to a crop when biology hasn’t yet rebounded enough to be very helpful?
2. How can we activate biology when continued fertilizer applications keep it suppressed?
3. How can we maintain yields, crop quality, and profitability while doing all that?

The regenerative perspective

Let’s begin with the end in mind: what’s our goal for a self-sustaining regenerative system that can continuously reduce reliance on external synthetic fertilizers?

Here are 4 key elements that we are aiming for

1. Build Soil Organic Matter as a reservoir
   1. Higher levels of organic matter increase nitrogen availability in the soil
2. Support microbial mineralization and cycling
   1. Microbes are the driving force in the nitrogen cycle
   2. Inoculants and Soil Primers build soil microbial populations
3. Reduce reliance on synthetic N over time
   1. Organic forms of nitrogen are less salty, so they cause less stress on the plant
4. Aim for plant health and ecosystem resilience
   1. This is win-win-win: using nitrogen more efficiently saves the grower money, and prevents leaching into waterways and ecosystems

7 Keys to Reducing Nitrogen

So, how do we actually do that? Here are 7 key things we’ve learned over the past 20 years.

1. Use smaller, more frequent fertilizer applications

• Splitting one 80 lb application into 2 40 lb applications will be much gentler on biological populations, and allow them to rebuild.

2. Match supply to crop demand

• Make sure your nitrogen is going out when the plant actually needs it.
• Avoid early excesses and late deficiencies

3. Supply all enzyme cofactors

• Molybdenum is essential, since it’s the enzyme cofactor in the nitrate reductase enzyme (1 pint per acre does the trick)
• Iron is a cofactor for both the nitrate and nitrite reductase enzymes. If molybdenum doesn’t help, then iron may be lacking.
• Sulfur can replace some nitrogen in certain contexts.
  • Adding sulfur is a simple way to cut out nitrogen.
  • Aim for a 10:1 ratio of nitrogen to sulfur
• Plants need energy to convert nitrate and ammonium into amino acids and protein.
  • Sugar can give them a boost if they need it.

4. Apply less to the soil & more to the plant

• Foliar urea is more efficient soil-applied urea, so the same amount goes a lot further.
• That means that not only are you spending a fraction of the amount on fertilizer, none of it is going into the soil to burn soil biology.

5. Use supporting data

• Sap data taken regularly throughout the season shows your plant’s total nitrogen level, as well as ammonium and nitrate.
• Monitoring sap means you can ensure your crop has enough nitrogen throughout the growing season, and that you haven’t cut too much.
• If it dips too low, you can apply more in time to prevent problems.

6. Have a catch-up plan

• Make sure you have a way to apply nitrogen later in the season in case you’ve cut too much and you need to apply more.
• This includes equipment (some way to apply foliars, whether that’s a sprayer, pivot, drone, or airplane), and access to the appropriate material. It also means having the sap data to guide those applications.

7. Organic growers beware!

• While conventional growers commonly overapply nitrogen, organic growers we work with almost always
• We rarely recommend organic growers cut nitrogen until we’ve seen a full year’s worth of sap data.