Kent's Korner for August 1999

TSM Logo August 1999

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Kent's Korner

By Kent Durbin, President
TSM Services, Inc.

I sure hope you been keeping cool. Returning from Louisiana, the thermometer in my van read 107 degrees. That's hot!

The summer training sessions at our Catlin Research Farm are ready to go. Remember you get CCA credits for attending and the meeting room is air-conditioned. The crops look the best ever.

I see more articles asking if fertilizer should be regulated. The obvious answer is that it will be unless we do something about it. I guess the fertilizer industry thinks that if they attempt to help, everybody will think they are 100% responsible. So we sit back and gripe whenever the subject comes up.

Some may say that the industry is taking care of it. It is called "Certified Crop Advisor" or CCA for short. Do you remember a few months ago I mentioned that one of our recommendations had been turned down in the state of Iowa? This person turning us down said we were putting on too much phosphorus. It turned out that he didn't know the difference between parts per million and pounds per acre (2x ppm = lbs/acre). His chart was in ppm. Our test scores and recommendations were in pounds per acre. He looked at our test score for phosphorus and compared it to his chart in ppm and said we should not be adding phosphorus. If he had converted to a common unit (either ppm or lbs/a), he would have found that our recommendation was okay. This person evaluating our nutrient management program does not have to have a CCA. How's that for getting the job done?

Does it seem strange to you that people would build a large animal complex (like chickens) will find that they have manure running out all the cracks with no place to put it? They are all over the place! The worst is that they are your potential competitor. How would you answer the telephone call I received where the dealer said that a chicken business was processing their manure and selling it to his customers and he wanted to know what he could do? He almost hung up on me when I replied "buy his manure and sell it for fertilizer". Do you realize that the fertilizer industry could take the leadership role in moving the manure from large animal complexes to the farmland and avoid pollution? The Total Soil Management® program can take processed manure and run it through fertilizer dealerships as fertilizer getting these dealers more money than if they were selling only conventional fertilizer materials. Want to make it better than this, get yourself together with a few other dealers and let's form a company (or cooperative) capable of processing manure to run through your plant. Why not get paid for processing the manure too? Over 50% of all the P & K you sell could be manure and you will get more money for the manure. Sounds like a winning combination to me. Anyone interested? Let's be a part of the solution to a big problem that no one seems to know how to solve.