Are you fully accounting for all the nitrogen that’s in your soils?
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Penn State has developed a Nitrogen Decision Support Tool (N Tool) that allows a user to input site-specific soil and cover crop data to calculate a corn fertilizer recommendation that accounts for nitrogen availability from soil organic matter and cover crop residues. Farms with a history of frequent manure applications may have the greatest benefit from using this new tool.
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What’s the Incentive?
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This program will pay $100 per acre for a farm to use the tool on 5-20 acres. This is intended to cover the labor and analysis costs of collecting plant and soil samples. The farm may collect this data themselves or work with their crop advisor.
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Farms with healthy soils may be able to reduce nitrogen fertilizer amounts, providing direct cost savings for the farm. Reducing nitrogen applications may also minimize nitrogen losses to the environment through excess nitrate leaching or nitrous oxide emissions.
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Requirements for Participation
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Farm must be within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
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Any corn field harvested for grain or silage.
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Minimum planting area for incentive payments is 5 acres, maximum is 20 acres.
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Fields greater than 20 acres can enroll just a portion of the field .
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Utilize the PSU soil sample analysis, Pre-sidedressSoil Nitrate Test (PSNT), and the Corn Stalk Nitrate Test (CSNT) .
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Estimate cover crop biomass and carbon:nitrogen ratio.
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Establish a control strip of your standard nitrogen rate in the enrolled field to compare. with the Penn State nitrogen fertilizer recommendation.
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Provide yield data from calibrated yield monitor maps (preferred but not required) and possibly other records to Penn State.​
To Apply for the Incentive:
