Progressive Agronomy Consulting Services- PACS LLC

04/27/2026

Just a reminder, if you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you find time to do it again? A lot of crop has gone in on some pretty wet soils this past week in the south central Illinois area that were either power dried out at the surface and mud below, which adds a nice tillage compaction zone. Or was no-till planted into fields that were pretty sticky. Compaction stress from tillage and/or the planter can be seen all year and especially at the end of the year in the combine. Compaction hurts soybeans the same as it can hurt corn. How do we expect rhizobia bacteria to function if there is a lack of oxygen? With all the farmers feeling the stress from interest rates, fertilizer prices, fuel prices, commodity prices, etc., let’s do our best to not add more stress on the situation.

04/26/2026

I bought this used soil probe last fall and had plans for it to be used all spring. I didn’t realize how much work it really needed when I bought it and truthfully I would have been better off to buy a new one from the start. But, it’s running like a champ now and definitely speeds the soil sampling process up!

04/24/2026

Almost feels weird soil sampling and the wind isn’t blowing 40 mph.

04/14/2026

Hey folks, be sure to get out in your fields and check your alfalfa!

04/09/2026

Doing some 0-6 and 6-12” samples in wheat, checking for nitrogen. Found a few aphids in wheat here in southern Christian county but not enough to consider spraying. Also finding some lady beetles out in the wheat too. I’m sure they are keeping the aphids in check!

03/26/2026

👉 Efficiency + placement + timing > total pounds applied

Is a pound of N P K or S a pound? That’s what we have always been told. And that is the thought behind why more guys use dry fertilizer because the analysis and pound for pound, there is a greater amount of nutrients in it compared to liquid. But, what if we take into account placement, form of nutrient, antagonistic properties of soil, soils ability to “fix” or “tie-up” nutrients, the time of application, the rate of application, or even the distance that a nutrient must be from a root for uptake? We all know that livestock manure “acts” different for crops than synthetic nutrients, therefore we know that pound for pound not all nutrients are the same. Pound for pound, these nutrients can become not plant available, resulting in a loss of ROI if the plant never takes them up.

Broadcast 150 pounds of DAP across an acre equals 0.0034 pounds of dap per square foot. Or 0.05 ounces per square foot which is actually 0.025 ounces of actual P2O5. Plants can only uptake phosphorus if it is within 3-5 millimeters of a root. What is the likeliness of that fertilizer being taken up by a plant? With warm temperatures and moisture, the DAP can become plant available in as little as a week. As it breaks down and becomes plant available, calcium, iron, and aluminum can be a negative force to be dealt with that will quickly antagonize that phosphorus and we are lucky to get 15% of the actual amount of P2O5 that was applied into a plant.

Potassium works the same way except a lot of other ions in the soil can antagonize K along with certain clay types fix more K than others. Ca, Mg, Na, NH4, Fe, Al, and even P can antagonize K in the soil. It has been well researched that single large applications of K are more likely to be fixed compared to several smaller applications throughout the growing season. In areas where they irrigate and the water contains high iron levels, the irrigation water antagonizes K. Prolonged wet or dry periods do not allow K to be released from the soil. And of the amount of K applied, at most only about 40% of the applied K can get into a plant. Fall applications of K are more likely to be tied up before the crop is even planted the following spring where even less than 40% is taken up by the plant. K can only be taken up if it is within 5-7 millimeters of a root.

So think about spreading that fertilizer, all the factors that work chemically, physically, and biologically in the soil and then planting on 30 inch rows. How efficient are we with the fertilizer application? Availability does NOT equal accessibility. Those are two very different measurements.

Now, if we were to band that fertilizer with strip-till, 2x2, or in-furrow, the recovery and accessibility of that nutrient drastically increases to 80+% efficiency. Now, we can actually apply less and get more out of it. This results in a greater ROI for the investment. Not to mention that the lower salt and if we take KCL out of the equation where chloride has negative affects on soils and biology, then we can see the soils begin to function differently and make more of the nutrients in the “unavailable” form, become available. Think about this, we have all had those years where we fertilized for let’s say 180 bushel corn and yielded 220. Then we fertilize for 220 and make 180 or less. Why did we yield better? More times than not, it had nothing to do with our management but the fact that Mother Nature was kind to us and provided adequate rainfall and temperatures that were conducive for the higher yields. 60-70% of corn yield comes after R2 and it is all influenced by weather. But, did we rob our soils of nutrients? Nope! Because the ideal rain and temperature events allowed the soil to feed the plants through microbial activity more nutrients than we have traditionally tested for. Do not fall for the lie that you removed more than you fertilized for so now you have to put more on to keep your fertility levels up.

There are some new products coming to market that are high analysis liquid P and K. Extremely low salt and appear to be extremely safe for soil biology. The use rates on these products are much less than we have typically had to apply but they are placed for plant uptake and in a form that plants can readily absorb. I am excited to see how trials of these products work this year as this may change the way we fertilize crops in the future.

03/25/2026

It blows my mind how dry the soil is for the end of March. I’ve been soil sampling this week and guys, If you have a cover crop growing out there you may consider early burn down. It may all change in 2 weeks. But right now, I’d be throwing some soybeans in the ground and adjusting my management.

03/18/2026

03/14/2026

Question for the new standard of soil health testing for NRCS programs such as the Regenerative Pilot Program, is an r2 value of 0.87 greater than an r2 value of 0.35?

Where does nature see sodium citrate that the Ace protein is being measured from? From my understanding, the ACE protein test is autoclaved uses at about 120°C under pressure and citrate to break apart organic matter complexes and then hydrolyzed into ammonium. This process does not happen naturally. It does not take into consideration microbial activity, temperature, moisture, or aeration. It is just a measure of a pool of potentially mineralizable protein but not the rate at which it can become available.

Where in nature do soils see Potassium Permanganate, a strong oxidizing agent, to extract Permanganate Oxidizable Carbon (POXC) from the soil? This method of extracting carbon from the soil extracts carbon from pools that are more stable and not what microbes see as food. Why would labs use this method? First off, it’s cheap and rapid. And can increase represented carbon relatively quickly by changing management practices. But, it does not tell us how the microbes can use the carbon to enhance the nutrient cycling ability of the soil.

When using the Haney Test properly to measure microbes and nutrient cycling, if one understands the saying “rain makes grain” and then correlate that back to what the test is telling us plants see when we have moisture in the profile, we can make a more informed decision on all nutrient cycling and availability and not just one piece. When the soil is moistened by rain we recognize that by the sweet smell of “a rain coming”. The moisture wakens microbes in the soil as they need thin films of moisture in the profile to move and do their business. Water extractable organic carbon is the young pool of carbon that these microbes use as food source. Water extractable organic nitrogen is the pools of organic proteins and amino acid complexes that become available easily with moisture and microbial activity that plants can take up and use as nitrogen sources. By measuring the microbial respiration when the soil is moistened, the test is measuring the rate at which microbes can feed on the carbon and mineralize nutrients. Plants do not care about how many parts per million of nutrients are on a test. They care about how many pounds per acre per day can become available. That is how the Haney test should be understood with relationship to rainfall, management, crops growing, and to then estimate how much fertilizer is required(if any) to produce your yield goal.

The Haney test was developed to show that the soil is alive, and that microbes, moisture, and weak acids do make nutrients available. We want to see these numbers on a report move and not be stagnant. The other test could be valuable but they are hypothetical, just the same as a Mehlich, Bray, Olsen, Morgan, etc. soil chemical extracts used to provide an indexed value of the likeliness of a soil to having a response to added fertilizer (and not an economical response I might add). The POXC and ACE protein are simply hypothetical index values. The only thing that I can figure is that the Cornell university has some pull with the government somewhere to continue viewing soils as a chemistry set. I mean soil organic matter to organic nitrogen has a r2 value of 0.136 and POXC to Organic N has an r2 value of about 0.35, whereas WEOC to WEON from a Haney test has a r2 value of 0.87. Statistically speaking, if a lab is running the Haney test and following the protocol exactly, which Regen Ag Lab is the only one I know of that is and the Haney test does NOT use the crap Solvita paddles, this test is more accurate and reliable than what the universities are promoting as soil health test. But, they have also been the ones to have promoted a test for the last 80 years that have caused us to use an exuberant amount of fertilizer to raise crops.

03/13/2026

Everyone says there’s no money in cropping. Some years they say there’s no money in livestock. But what happens when you pair the two together? I think we need to start thinking outside of the paradigm we have been forced into over the last 40 years of removing livestock and crop diversity, and the get big or get out mentality.

03/07/2026

Big news coming out of Mizzou. They are going to start implementing the Mehlich-3 test instead of Bray P1. Wow! Talk about a sideways move to still deny the fact that the soil is alive. This test doesn’t take into consideration soil texture, pH, microbial activity, or rainfall to determine nutrient cycling ability. This test does not extract the same form of nutrients that plants uptake. It is purely an indexed value of the likeliness of having a response to fertilizer. That’s it. But hey, they stepped up in time from using a 1945 developed soil test to a 1984 method. Maybe in the next 40 years, they will come around to start understanding nutrient cycling through microbes, plant root exudates, and rain rather than acids that the soil never sees.