"Best?"

[grgsrvc]

Interesting read here guys. Is some of these products similar to the
OMEX products? They can make a very good presentation as well.

Jdgreen I have to concur with you though. I do not feel the soil on my
feild is being degraded at all. In fact through practices like
returning all the straw back to the soil and good crop rotation my
fields are improving every year. I benchmark soil test and have
noticed marked improvement in the results.

I realize this is anecdotal but I took over one farm about 5 years ago.
The farm while not officially organic was a very low input hay/pasture
with a plow down every once in a while to grow some oats. As you can
imagine it was producing very poorly. We started farming it and with
reasonable fertilizer use and crop rotation the field has in the last
two years produced very good yields. Amazing what happens if you
replace what was taken away.

Cheers.

[lesm]

I read the above posts with great interest. I can't believe how gullible some people can be. Perhaps these " BEST" people should start using magnetic seed treaters-heard they made a lot of farmers wealthy years ago. What a bunch of crap- I guess each to their own.

[lesm]

Got back from coffee a few hours ago and I mentioned to the fellow farmers there about the articles regarding Best. One farmer suggested that he knows that it is a proven fact that if you polish your shoes 2 weeks prior to seeding your wheat, your yield will increase by 10 bushes/acre!! Got to go and polish my shoes!

[furrowtickler]

Has anyone one here actualy tried this best system on this forum? One year, 2-3? I mean first hand on your own feilds without cutting current/past fert rates? And yes useing Best's CFF on it's own without Fert or herbicide is plain f@#$in stupid! (As JD pointed out) But has some one credible with a good fertiltiy and crop husbandry(sp) incoroperated this into their management program? Anyone? The three producers that I got info on from others and talked to, all had the same story.
In a strong agronomic environment this product is further enhancing productivity on their farms. I am not talking about the clown who is looking to eliminate fert, herb and everything or the organis group (no disrespect). I am talking about guys that are top yeilding progresive farmers who still target and hit high yeilds and net returns. Yes we have seen a much better soil profile on our farm than what we did 10 years ago but I beleive we can take it further yet. There are some here that believe they have become almighty already and think that their currnet system is perfect - so did the boys in the 20's - 50's - 70's.
From a quote "Change is good donkey"
JMO - I will never stop looking for a better way to farm. I am not saying this "Best" is the end all be all but we will try it and good or bad We will let others know what we see.
Think about this, we contacted a farmer we know very well in an area north east of us. We asked specifically about "farmer X". He had no idea what farmer X was doing. He just said that farmer X was one of the better farmers in the whole area bar none. And the last two years famer X had unbelievable crops.
We did the same in two other areas in the province - same reaction. - In a nut shell all three farmer X's have been using best for a least three years. This would not intreige you at all? Each to their own.

[Ron]

furrowtickler, please keep us up to date on this and I will try to keep an open mind.
Thanks

[silverback]

I have reread this topic several times and all I can gather is that this company has their own soil test lab that will custom design some sort of "Biofertilizer" for our farm that will solve our soil's problems and reduce our fertilizer needs.

Is that correct?

I also understand that they don't want to do a 40 acre side by side, but rather 160. I don't know about anyone else, but I can more easily find 80 acres that is very similar than I can find 160.

Can nobody tell us the active ingredients of this "Biofertilizer"? Are they live cultures of Bacteria? How is it stored?

Is it $5/acre?, $10? $20?

How is it applied and when?
If I apply it this year, will a soil sample at the end of the year prove that things are better or even that the biofertilizer is still there? What if I use a different soil lab?

Is there an MSDS?

If I had a product that would cure all the problems I have read here, I would be negligent to not advertise this to high heaven. There would be nonstop ads on TV and radio about it's yield benefits.

There is a yield benefit right?

If this stuff more than pays for itself - great, we'll buy it too. However, until they are ready to answer some easy questions I'll hold onto our limited cash.

[makar]

I tried best on a small scale in 09. The canola seemed better. The wheat was a wreck. What happened was in 08 we had a drought, and like 3 to 8 bushel canola. In 09 the canola stubble had heavy volunteer pressure. I dont need to talk about the heavy spring frosts and the multipule wildoat flushes. The best treated side of a field seemed to have less wild oats. To my surprise at harvest what looked like 25 bushel wheat on the best land was 15, what looked like 15 without best and the heavier wildoats ran 20. What had happened the best product stimulated the volunteer canola stunned by the spring frosts such that the chemical i sprayed on the wheat to kill canola did not work. This is probably not typical with the unusaul spring and a dry year combined. I believe this product has merit but i dont find it worth it. My farm is as some above have posted, nh3 in time is making me visible improvements. My $10 an acre is better spent elsewhere. I also tried a similiar product on a different wheat field with no difference. What a long term use may do is not feasible for me, i will be out of the game by then, sooner if i put my money in such stuff.

[makar]

It smells like sewer sludge.

[lesm]

makar

YOU are the man.....

[wade]

Interesting posts. I have to admit, some of these products make me curious. As I do believe alot of them are snake oil for most situations, I can't help but wonder if at certain times or under certain conditions that some of these products may hold some merit. I aslo think that a 1 year trail is not very scientific but it is hard to keep ones interest if it affects your pocketbook with no visible results. The questions that popped into my head from Makar's post were 1.why did the wildoats perform better? 2. if it helped wildoats, would it help crops? There are so many variables!
Ag-guy will say something that gets me interested and then in the next sentence he says farmers are stupid and he is smart and makes me wanna puke! Wish I had all the answers!
I like Ross Mackenzie's advice to me a few years back when I had a canola crop problem- just try a test strip instead of maybe wasting a bunch of money. That way you know for next time.
Off subject but not- Once had a diesel fuel additive salesman come into the yard trying to sell me a product. After the pitch, I told him, let me use it and if I think it helps, I will pay you for the product then. He said, I can't do that, I don't know you!

[bgmb]

Furrow,

I am begging you don't fall for this BS.
You are totally kidding yourself if you think you can replace or fertilizer with some bs product.

Do yourself and your family a favor pick up the phone and phone a real and reputable soil scientist at a university I recommend someone like Don Flaten at U of M. He will tell you the truth.

As for you Ag Guy, you make me sick, you are praying on the naive, uneducated and ill informed. I am sure you have contributed to many bankruptcies by selling your products which offer little or no value to unsuspecting farmers. I would much rather support a company like agrium at least they are selling me a product that has real value.

[furrowtickler]

Who ever said I was going to replace my fert with best/cff? Thanks for the advice and I will call your contact, But we are going to try a few feilds over a two/three year period and then see what happens. We are adding to our current fertility program not"replacing". As I said before, only a fool would replace any fert with a biological type product unless you are organic. lighten up, this will be a trial ony for now, no trail has ever caused finacial harm to our farm and a few have proven very financialy viable short term and long.

[furrowtickler]

One thing to think about as well, in the fall of 2000 the last year we applied fall NH3, we went heavy for us at the time. We put close to 80/85 lbs N for canola and around 70 N for the cereals. 2001 and 2002 were the driest years here scince the 30's - That my freind almost broke us. It also forced us to re-think fert and crop nutrition as a whole to keep the farm viable. It made us think outside the box and so far it has proven beneficial. We are far from naive just slightly "weathered".

[bgmb]

I am going to add one last comment to this thread as I have already made my views known.

That's good to know furrow that you aren't in any way using these phantom products as an excuse to replace nutrients.

I am sorry to pick on you Ag guy But I am just extremely fed up with companies pushing products with no !!REAL!! data to back them up. By data i don't mean lets split a field and have some half assed non replicated trial. Oh and if the product doesn't win that's ok I just won't tell anyone about that trial.

I mean real replicated side by side data over multiple years done by an unbiased third party. And lets see some results that are statistically significant not we got an average of a %5 yield increase on 3 trials that means absolutely nothing.

I hope farmers aren't fooled by these tricks, when trying a new product one should ask to see real data like i described above. If that cannot be supplied then I would be very skeptical.

One last note on the RR canola guys pulling their varieties out of the real trials so they can manufacture their own data to sell their products. Sick of getting their asses handed to them by Invigors so they pull out.

This is one area where I think the gov should spend some more of their ag $$$ doing unbiased real research, like PAMI and the ag canada research stations.

[furrowtickler]

What "real" trials are you talking about? PCVT? Why on this thread - nothing to do with best.