September: Purchasing for Profit

Many farmers have already pre-booked fertilizer for next season, or will in the coming weeks and months. Sentinel makes nitrogen management smarter, but it creates one wrinkle: farmers using Sentinel don't stick to a fixed fertilizer plan. Instead, they adjust through the season based on what the crop actually needs.

Some of our farmer customers have found a way around this. They pre-book fertilizer based on the best nitrogen efficiency they've ever achieved on their farm, then buy any additional fertilizer in-season, only when Sentinel's insights confirm they need it. They still budget for a typical purchase up front. It just gets split into two decisions instead of one.

This approach has real advantages:

1. Savings from day one – Dollars you don't spend on fertilizer stay in the bank instead of sitting in storage.

2. No storage headaches – Nothing left over to store or return.

3. Less money at risk – If hail, wind, or another setback damages the crop or reduces yield potential, you haven't already spent on fertilizer for a full crop that may not materialize.

Here's how it works in practice:

Start with two efficiency numbers. Your achievable nitrogen efficiency is the best you've ever hit on your farm — take your yield and nitrogen-applied history from the past several years and calculate nitrogen applied divided by yield for each year, then use your best result. If you've run Sentinel, you can use your canary plot number or your best Sentinel-assisted result instead. As a rough benchmark, 0.5 to 0.7 is achievable on medium to heavy soils, and 0.65 to 0.8 on lighter soils. Your typical efficiency is just your usual planned nitrogen divided by your average yield.

Set two yield numbers. Your expected yield is what you're confident the crop will produce; your yield goal is what you're aiming for if everything breaks right. Sentinel handles the in-season adjustments between the two.

Do the math. Multiply your achievable efficiency by your expected yield to get the amount to pre-book, then price it out at your pre-book rate. Multiply your typical efficiency by your yield goal to get your potential fertilizer need, priced at a representative average. The difference between the two is money you've already saved — before the season even starts.

That gap can shrink if Sentinel later calls for more nitrogen than planned. But that's a far better problem than reaching harvest with unused fertilizer and having to decide whether to carry it to next year or dump it into this year's crop just because you already bought it.

It's not without trade-offs. This strategy works best if you're comfortable applying nitrogen at or after the mid-vegetative stages. Fertilizer prices in-season can run higher or lower than what you locked in — though in-season prices are often lower, since demand has already peaked by then. And availability isn't guaranteed, so it's worth checking with your local retailer on in-season supply before you count on it.

There may also be financing angles for this approach in the future — something like a tax-advantaged fertilizer savings account, or better lending terms for farmers who buy this responsibly. Food for future thought.

Bottom line: if you're pre-booking fertilizer and running Sentinel next season, consider booking only what you need to hit your achievable efficiency, and let Sentinel tell you when to buy the rest. You'll bank the savings up front instead of hoping they show up at the end.