How many people do you know who started out in production agriculture without debt? I’ll wager it’s not too many. It’s a personal choice and comes down to deciding what risk you’re comfortable with.

Looking across a pasture, we should expect to see grazing animals, a diversity of forage species, fences with gates and drinking water sources. Not so obvious is the dynamic flow of energy, nutrients and water above and below ground. But rest assured, this is occurring constantly, just at different rates depending on the seasonal growth cycle.

Nitrogen fertilizer management is highly impacted by changes and variability in climatic conditions. The specific aspects with the greatest effect include wet conditions in the fall, shortened winters, delayed spring fieldwork season, excessive precipitation early in the growing season and unusually heavy individual rainfall events.

Every year in the Midwest, alfalfa fields are at risk for winter damage or kill due to extended cold temperatures and ice sheeting. Having the ability to evaluate your alfalfa fields for injury in early spring can ultimately jump-start crop rotation decisions.