Soil Productivity

Everyone who wants to get anything to grow is told to start with soil testing. However, many don't test enough, and some don't even test at all. This is even true for farmers!

While going with general fertilization recommendations may work well enough for a home gardener, it is a very costly mistake for anyone trying to grow produce at scale. An incorrect guess can lower yields by several percentage points, which amounts to many tons when acres of land are involved. Farming is a business, and letting production drop due to easily-avoided errors like this is like flushing money away.

In many cases, farmers do test, but not nearly enough. For example, they may only run a test every 10 acres, when in reality, it would be better to do it for every acre. This is because large plots of land have a lot of variability, and if a soil productivity program doesn't take it into account, many parts of the land will be getting the wrong materials. When that happens, it can actually lower the productivity of the incorrectly-treated parts of the property.

One of the reasons people don't like to do much soil testing is that it is time-consuming and tedious to take the samples. Fortunately, it is easy to avoid this problem by hiring a company that specializes in improving soil productivity. They will do all of the testing that is actually needed, and even better, they'll let you know exactly what needs to be done with each part of the farm. In fact, you can even hire them to apply the minerals, fertilizers, and other amendments once the results are in! This is a great way for farmers to get everything truly ready for the next crop.