How many units of nitrogen for a first wheat thats been after a long term grass ley?

Two Tone

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
czechmate said:
Similar to the OP, how much would folk reduce N by following a very thick, tall crop of field beans please.
Kg/ha if at all possible as I seriously have no idea what units means😞
Click to expand...
I’d cut back from 180KgsN/ha (1st wheat after a non leguminous crop) to about 155KgsN/ha, after your beans.
But it still depends on what price you bought the N at.
If it was bought last year up till about May leave it at the same level.
It it was bought around the £400 mark, reduce by 20%.
If it is bought today (if you can get it) reduce by 50%.



Understanding Units is actually quite simple:
Fertiliser used to be bought in 112lbs (50kg) bags, being 20 bags/ton(tonne).

If you had 20.10.10 fertiliser, each bags contained 20 units N, 10 units P and 10 units K.
If you were growing a Spring Barley crop and wanted to apply 60 units on N and 30 units each of P&K, you needed to put 3 bags/acre on.

It really was simple and I still work in units/acre with fertiliser to aim for, but have a spreadsheet that works it out in KgsN/ha and Kgs/ha of actual product, depending on the unit strength of the fertiliser I am using. In my case Urea at 46 units / 50kg, which is a strength of 46%.

So depending who i am talking to and how old they are, I can speak in both rates, probably just as you can talk both English and French!
As a bench mark, 180 KgsN/ha is 150 units/acre. Which just happens to be the rate I mostly (used to, before the N price went up) use as 1st wheat after Linseed, Rape or Oats and for Winter barley, following 1st wheat.
For 2nd wheat, I (used to) raise the level to 175 units/acre, being 220KgsN/ha.

RB209 would suggest IRO 10% higher figures, but it is always too much here and yields would go down, because we had gone over the top of the N response curve.
Just remember that it was the Fertiliser industry themselves that wrote RB209!
On more gutsy land than here they may be right. But when your long term average yield is 8.5t/ha, IMO it is 10% too high.
 
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czechmate

czechmate

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Limousin/Charentes toad land
Two Tone said:
I’d cut back from 180KgsN/ha (1st wheat after a non leguminous crop) to about 155KgsN/ha, after your beans.
But it still depends on what price you bought the N at.
If it was bought last year up till about May leave it at the same level.
It it was bought around the £400 mark, reduce by 20%.
If it is bought today (if you can get it) reduce by 50%.
Click to expand...

cant get a price for urea. Received a price for AN (haven't used for about 15 years) of €860😳, this week
 
Will Blackburn

Will Blackburn

Member
Location
Cheshire
jackrussell101 said:
As above really, just wondering if I can get away without putting as much N on and not detrimentally affecting the yield, it's been grass for 10 years before with regular lashings of slurry etc
Click to expand...
Was it grazed or cut, I find that makes a bigger difference than slurry. A cut ley can be very hungry, an intensively grazed ley could live with half rate N, 80kg/ha
 
Two Tone

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
czechmate said:
cant get a price for urea. Received a price for AN (haven't used for about 15 years) of €860😳, this week
Click to expand...
Feck me!!
I’d be seriously cutting the rate you use at that price for 34.5% AN!
As a rule of thumb, I work on a yield reduction of about half a %, for every % you reduce the N rate by. But at that cost /KgN and the expected sale price of the crop, at that price, you will be better off cutting your N rate/ha by at least half and expecting a yield of about 25% less. Fortunately, your crop won’t be under so much pressure and you can also reduce fungicide usage by at least as much, if not more.

I ordered my Urea in September (Delivered November) for £425, having turned down £400 the week before.
I paid £275 for Jan delivery 2021. I heard the other day that Urea is now £750/tonne here, if you can get it!

I would normally have used Double-Top (27N 30SO3) as a first dressing to get the Sulphur on, but just couldn’t get a price, so have switched to Urea+ Sulphur (33N 30SO3), which hasn’t turned up yet! (I want to use it on a frost in February).

I preferred using Double-Top, because sometimes if it remains cold, the Urea doesn’t work fast enough when put on, on a frost (ice-road-trucking) in February and the crop goes too yellow, before the Urea becomes available to it.


I firmly believe that at these high prices and the availability of N fertilisers being so short, Global yields will drop by IRO 25% causing a complete removal of all World stock surpluses sometime in 2023 and actually going into deficit. This will push all crop (and livestock) prices up significantly. So significantly that our U.K. Government can completely forget ELMs as every acre will be needed to produce enough food!
We can’t eat trees or Wild bird cover!

Ironic, or what?


As for the “You mustn’t use N fertilisers because it creates too much CO2 when being manufactured”, it just so happens that every bit of that CO2 byproduct is needed by Slaughterhouses and Soft-drinks manufacturers, resulting in 60,000 pigs not being able to enter the food chain.
My daughter works for a Company supplying flavourings to various food manufacturers, such as PepsiCo. In September, they were less than a fortnight away from having to stop all Soft-drink production!

Ironic, or what? Again!!

Especially when CF was then ordered to start N fertiliser production again by the UK Government, whilst at the same time still saying (at COP 26) that we need to reduce CO2 emissions, including from Nitrate fertilisers!
 
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czechmate

czechmate

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Limousin/Charentes toad land
Two Tone said:
Feck me!!
I’d be seriously cutting the rate you use at that price for 34.5% AN!
As a rule of thumb, I work on a yield reduction of about half a %, for every % you reduce the N rate by. But at that cost /KgN and the expected sale price of the crop, at that price, you will be better off cutting your N rate/ha by at least half and expecting a yield of about 25% less. Fortunately, your crop won’t be under so much pressure and you can also reduce fungicide usage by at least as much, if not more.

I ordered my Urea in September (Delivered November) for £425, having turned down £400 the week before.
I paid £275 for Jan delivery 2021. I heard the other day that Urea is now £750/tonne here, if you can get it!

I would normally have used Double-Top (27N 30SO3) as a first dressing to get the Sulphur on, but just couldn’t get a price, so have switched to Urea+ Sulphur (33N 30SO3), which hasn’t turned up yet! (I want to use it on a frost in February).

I preferred using Double-Top, because sometimes if it remains cold, the Urea doesn’t work fast enough when put on, on a frost (ice-road-trucking) in February and the crop goes too yellow, before the Urea becomes available to it.


I firmly believe that at these high prices and the availability of N fertilisers being so short, Global yields will drop by IRO 25% causing a complete removal of all World stock surpluses sometime in 2023 and actually going into deficit. This will push all crop (and livestock) prices up significantly. So significantly that our U.K. Government can completely forget ELMs as every acre will be needed to produce enough food!
We can’t eat trees or Wild bird cover!

Ironic, or what?


As for the “You mustn’t use N fertilisers because it creates too much CO2 when being manufactured”, it just so happens that every bit of that CO2 byproduct is needed by Slaughterhouses and Soft-drinks manufacturers, resulting in 60,000 pigs not being able to enter the food chain.
My daughter works for a Company supplying flavourings to various food manufacturers, such as PepsiCo. In September, they were less than a fortnight away from having to stop all Soft-drink production!

Ironic, or what? Again!!

Especially when CF was then ordered to start N fertiliser production again by the UK Government, whilst at the same time still saying (at COP 26) that we need to reduce CO2 emissions, including from Nitrate fertilisers!
Click to expand...

i completely agree
 
E

e3120

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northumberland
All this talk of alternatives to the first wheat - are any of them going to be anywhere close on gm? When I say 2nd better, we're talking maybe closer to 5t, rather than over 4.

Ok, osr might compete on clean ground at today's prices, but you sacrifice a good chunk of the grass season getting it in in time. One of the big advantages of wheat after grass is you can (need to) forget about it until the autumn weather has broken.
 
teslacoils

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
If you grow grass as a break, you hopefully can avoid the other stuff that doesn't pay. That said, I'm looking at putting beans in after some grass next year - was supposed to be in for three years but is coming out after two so the beans add that extra year.
 

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