Fertilizer

Get all the information because I can't make you a good recommendation here.

And I get it that a lot of people say NPK, NPK, NPK.

I will promise you that on a lot of farms out there, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are not the yield limiting factor today.

And I don't have any of those micros or sulfur.

Variable costs rose sharply for 2026 crops, up 5.3% for soybeans and 7.7% for corn, according to USDA.

But the lion's share of those tallies came from fertilizer, where bills were around 17% higher.

Price tag for NPK on an acre of Illinois corn is already down a percent from spring highs, and costs normally are most attractive after buying ahead of fall application subsides toward the end of the calendar year.

Growers could also catch a break, relatively speaking, on fuel to plant, grow, harvest, dry, and transport crops.

Any tally for diesel, gasoline, or propane will largely depend on what happens to tankers moving out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and the whims of our friend Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So it's not...

But as soon as you give it nitrogen, the plant thinks, well, why would I bother working so hard to develop a relationship with that life in the soil when I'm just going to get bottle fed this chemical when I need it? And most of it is nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus for NPK.

So the three main macronutrients.

So that vine is going to look big and healthy on the surface, but underneath it's sick.

Fertilizers have been in use for a very long time.

The NPK fertilizers, which, you know, in its production, I believe the right thing, the right chemicals would have been used and so on.

But what these farmers are doing is they've graduated from the common NPK that we use, that we know of, that we've been Grant for years, for years that farmers have been using.

And you know, I told you that the cases of cancer these days is increasing.

Those times, those days, maybe in the clinic for a whole day, probably you may see just two patients.

But now, we get to see them in their 70s per day.

70s per day.

So what has gone wrong? What has gone wrong? I'm sure these farmers, and just the incidence of the farmer I told you of, they've graduated from the regular use of those NPKs to other harmful things.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of guys here are still doing their standard NPK dry applications, and what we're seeing here is we're starting to play with the foliar, this foliar feeding, and starting to get these micronutrients in the plant, and we're starting to push these yields.

You know, when we start talking about, you

know, NPK,

for instance, I look at that as like the horsepower, and then I look at the micronutrients that makes the horsepower usable.

You know, just take corn, for instance.

So, like, it's a, yeah, it's, it's a stark contrast.

Fertilizer-wise, um, I know the deadline is coming up.

You've, you've...

We have only one week left.