FUELLED by the hope of the best season and yields ever, but undermined by a fear of a huge fertiliser bill or frosted and pinched grain, farmers face an annual dilemma about whether or not to apply nitrogen.
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Ylad Living Soils owner Rhonda Daly said striving for high protein and yield leaves farmers vulnerable to other challenges such as frosting, disease and loss of soil organic carbon.
"With more than 66 per cent of applied nitrogen missing the target plant, we have to start asking if 'cheap' nitrogen is 'cheap' at all," she said.
Ms Daly said 25 years of scientific studies in the US had shown artificial nitrogen fertilisers consumed up to 30 times their weight in soil carbon to become biological.
This keeps the carbon level in most of the world's crop land falling.
"We must get off the artificial nitrogen treadmill to restore soil biology," she said.
Ylad Living Soils has, in the past decade, helped farmers reduce nitrogen fertilisers by more than half, without impacting yield and quality, by understanding how soil, plant, and rhizosphere interactions create balanced nutritional crops.
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