John KempfRegenerative Agriculture Entrepreneur

Less upfront nitrogen = more profit.

16 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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A grower cut upfront nitrogen applications and saved $70-$100 per acre by skipping plant growth regulators, insecticides, and fungicides. Less early nitrogen meant higher brix levels, less lodging, and no fungal disease pressure.

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And there's a couple of other things that we have stumbled across as a result of pulling back a lot of our upfront nitrogen. Up here, the conventional agronomic understanding is we put everything down upfront. And what we have found by reducing all that and pulling the majority of that nitrogen out is that we have a less difficult time elevating our brix levels, we have less problem with lodging, we have, for some reason, no need anymore for fungicide applications. Funny how that works. Funny how that works. So we start looking at this. Okay, well, if we don't have to use a plant growth regulator, there's $20 an acre. If we don't have to use an insecticide, there's another $6 to $15. And then your fungicide, if we don't have to use that, if it's 1 or 2 applications, there's another $20 or $40 an acre right there. So up here we're looking at an additional $70 to $100 per acre to manage the problems that come with the thinking that we have been taught as being 100% accurate.