Terry Daynard

@agronomistag I absolutely agree. A direct result of the pressures on so many people in science to publish, even if they have nothing new to say.

@TerryDaynard The number of papers now published is way out of line with the advancement of understanding.

Each morning I get a paper similar to this from Academia.edu and many are very good. Many are also very repetitive. It looks by this as if I have a lot of reading to do.

@TerryDaynard Actual cash Urea price today is $845 cdn, Mt. "here' picked up locally at seeding time

@woody_VA Here's a graph from Emerson Nafziger's classic publication from U Illinois. ifca.com/media/web/1537… You might need 70 lb/acre of N to grow 260 bu/acre....or 250 lb N to grow 160 bu/acre.

@TerryDaynard its about as simple as predicting the weather. There are a lot of variables at play

If you multiply by ~1.35 to get these prices into $Cdn, that's ~$C1075 for urea. Ouch.

@woody_VA This adds strength to importance of efforts to better predict, by late June-early July, seasonal differences in corn N needs. Unfortunately, research and on-farm efforts to date have yielded no breakthroughs.

@TerryDaynard Its almost 50% more for them right now. thats going to make corn tough to pencil with the weak corn basis ND has

@woody_VA My price in late 2025 was $803/tonne.

@woody_VA True. Add another 10%!

Right now, in barns and equipment sheds across the American Midwest, farmers are making the most consequential decision of this war. Not generals. Not senators. Farmers. At $683 per ton urea, corn economics have collapsed. Nitrogen is the single largest input cost for corn production. At pre-war prices a farmer could justify 180 pounds per acre and expect a margin. At $683 the math breaks. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria. They do not need the molecule trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. The seed decision is being made this week across roughly 90 million acres of American cropland. Once the planter rolls into the field, the choice is irreversible. Corn seed in the ground stays corn. Soy seed stays soy. The acreage allocation locks in. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. That report will tell the world how American agriculture responded to the Hormuz blockade. But the decisions it captures are being made now, in conversations between farmers and agronomists and seed dealers who are looking at nitrogen prices and making the rational economic choice: plant the crop that does not need the input you cannot afford. Every acre that shifts from corn to soybeans tightens the corn balance sheet for the rest of the year. Corn feeds livestock. Corn feeds ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. That demand is inelastic. If acres shift and production falls while the mandate holds, corn prices spike. Feed costs spike. The protein cascade reverses. The US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork margins that were benefiting from cheap feed compress when corn crosses $5 per bushel. This is how a naval blockade 7,000 miles from Iowa reaches the American grocery shelf. Not through oil. Not through shipping. Through nitrogen. The farmer cannot afford the molecule. The molecule cannot transit the strait. The farmer plants soy instead. The corn supply tightens. The ethanol mandate consumes its fixed share. The remaining corn reprices. The feed reprices. The meat reprices. The grocery bill reprices. The decision is not political. It is arithmetic performed on a kitchen table by a person who needs to plant in three weeks and cannot wait for a ceasefire, an escort convoy, or an insurance normalisation that the Red Sea precedent says takes years. The deepest penetrator in the American arsenal cannot reach a sealed Iranian doctrinal packet. But the fertiliser price it failed to resolve is reaching every planting decision on 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. The war’s most irreversible consequence is not happening in a bunker. It is happening in a barn. And by the time USDA publishes the data on March 31, the seeds will already be in the ground. Full analysis in the link. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

I am not sure if you'll be able to access this, but it describes a real breakthrough in electric vehicle technology - full recharging in 9 minutes - almost as fast as with gasoline and diesel. economist.com/science-and-te…

@Lyonseed @agronomistag @MikeGrunwald No real evidence of soil C sequestration with cover crops (red clover) after winter wheat in these two long-term crop rotational studies in Ontario., Alan. Ref: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@TerryDaynard @agronomistag @MikeGrunwald That's the beauty of winter wheat in Ontario. We get to capture all that mid-summer and fall sunlight in a covercrop that produces enough biomass to improve soil health, sequester C, add N and prevent erosion.

If cover crops don’t grow much biomass, they won’t boost soil health, and they can seem like a waste of money. But not every goal needs big growth. Erosion control, for example, takes far less biomass. csanr.wsu.edu/cover-crop-ben…

@JoshBoersen @agronomistag @MikeGrunwald Cereal rye, for sure. I tried ryegrass on some tiny spots once, and then did more reading. Out came the glyphosate and then hand weeding for escapes. I sure don't need that on our farms.

@TerryDaynard @agronomistag @MikeGrunwald Which 'rye' are you using Terry? The cereal one a non issue IMO. The grass one, thats trouble!

@agronomistag @MikeGrunwald I use rye cover crops only where water is most likely to run and cause erosion. Cost is very cheap and I don't seem to need much rye growth to "do the job." Corn residue, not cover cropping, is what adds to soil OM around here (or at least maintains it). Soybeans do the reverse.

@MikeGrunwald Yes. I would say it is easier to justify them for erosion control than for soil health, C sequestration, or adding nitrogen with legumes. All the latter goals have the cost of allowing the cover crop to grow during the good growing season, when we like to grow cash crops.

Another great article by @FerRural, based on paper by Keith Reid at Guelph. farmtario.com/crops/unlockin… Cdn farmers should also read this from Dr. Nafziger at U Illinois. Soil N mineralization is assumed to meet all of the extra N needs of high-yielding corn. ifca.com/media/web/1537…

@AgFreeAgent @agronomistag It's so nice to hear them singing at the first light of dawn - and evenings too.

@TerryDaynard @agronomistag A lot of robins here. Saw a lot walking through Delhi Park a couple of days ago.

We've lived here more than 50 years, most of those with bird feeders near windows, and it's intriguing how the species have changed over time. We used to be inundated with Common (aka English) Sparrows, but this winter, not a one. Juncoes are the dominant feeder species now.

Even enthusiastic bio-product salesmen are coming around to this view on biochar.

@agronomistag Interesting. It's too early to tell for 2026 as they are just arriving from the south, but I think our numbers were record high in 2025. There were Robins everywhere.

@TerryDaynard I used to see a lot of robins here, now very few.

@tlkarwandy No magpies in Southern Ontario. Not sure why. However trumpeter swans put on a real show, locally, last week.

@TerryDaynard We have way fewer magpies this winter, but we have your sparrows!

@lbossaer We have always had lots of common/house/English sparrows but not this year. A puzzle. No change in bird feed, but changes in species is very normal. House finches were once common but not anymore. Now we have cardinals, several other sparrow species, and more bluejays than ever.

@TerryDaynard Curious have you changed the types of seeds used over the years? Has a neighbour started trapping sparrows? I know when I tried that it cleaned up the whole neighbourhood of sparrows.