In Case You Missed It: Your Soil Isn’t Guessing. Why Are You?
We teamed up with Greg Patterson, President and Chief Agronomist at A&L Canada, for a knowledge-dense deep dive into the current state of crop nutrition and where it’s going next. The main takeaway?
Your soil is telling you everything you need to know. You just have to listen.
He unpacked what’s really happening below ground and why many current nutrition programs aren’t delivering the returns they should. He challenged the assumptions baked into traditional soil tests, bulk sampling, and input strategies that prioritize volume over availability. He got into the real mechanics of what’s happening below ground and why many of our current approaches to crop nutrition aren’t delivering the return they should.
Here’s the short version:
The ROI Isn’t Missing. It’s Misunderstood.
If you're chasing performance from single-input solutions while ignoring nutrient balance, you’re leaving money in the field. Greg showed that performance doesn’t come from piling on inputs. It comes from aligning your nutrition strategy with what the crop and soil actually need.
Crop nutrition works as a system. Every nutrient affects how others behave. Nitrogen uptake is influenced by potassium. Potassium efficiency depends on boron. Zinc and manganese affect how plants access and use phosphorus. That doesn’t mean apply everything. It means apply with intention, informed by real data from your fields.
This is where most strategies break down. We think we’re feeding the crop, but we’re often over supplying the knowns and overlooking the limiters.
Soil Testing: From Broad Strokes to Precision
Greg made a compelling case for stepping beyond composite sampling. Managing whole fields with blended data often masks the very issues that limit yield and ROI.
His approach:
Not every zone needs the same plan. And not every plan needs more product. But without resolution, there's no precision.
Micronutrients: The Most Overlooked Limiters in the Field
This was a recurring theme. Boron isn’t just about reproductive health, it directly influences nitrate efficiency and potassium retention. Zinc drives root development and early vigor. Copper, manganese, iron… these trace elements may be required in smaller amounts , but their absence has outsized effects.
Many of the most common in-field problems (poor emergence, weak stalks, uneven maturity) are not only environmental. They are nutritional. And too often, they are misdiagnosed.
As Greg emphasized, micros don’t act in isolation. Their value shows up most when the rest of the system is working. Ignoring them doesn’t make the problem go away. It just makes it harder to solve later.
The Bigger Picture: Micronutrients Matter More in a Balanced System
Greg made it clear: nutrient performance depends on the state of the whole system. If potassium is low, zinc won’t function properly. If boron is missing, nitrate efficiency suffers.
That's why nutrition strategies work best when they are built on a full understanding of the soil.
Micronutrients deliver the strongest ROI when they are matched to real needs, timed properly, and supported by balanced macros. That’s where high-efficiency products like Soileos can shine, because they stay available, support biology, and deliver under real-world conditions.
Where Soileos Fits In
After Greg's deep dive, Jason McNamee, GM of AGT Soileos, shared how our technology supports this more complete view of crop nutrition.
Soileos is about delivering what’s missing—micronutrients like zinc, manganese, copper, and iron—in a form that's stable, bioavailable, and soil-friendly. It doesn't leach. It doesn’t tie up. And it supports the microbiome that drives nutrient cycling.
Because balanced nutrition doesn’t stop at macros. And sustainability doesn’t mean compromising on performance.
Watch the full webinar here:
Curious whether your micronutrients are limiting ROI? Let’s talk about how to find out—with data, not guesswork