Why Nutrient Efficiency Has Become the New Standard in Crop Production
Editor’s Note: As we mark the first 25 years of the 21st century, CropLife reflects on the innovations, challenges, and transformations that have shaped ag retail — honoring our past while looking ahead to agriculture’s promising future. In this article, we look at how nutrient efficiency has emerged as a defining standard in crop production — driving profitability, sustainability, and innovation across the ag retail landscape.
Throughout the whole of the 21st century, macronutrients have performed remarkably well. All three – N, P, and K – have seen ups and downs in terms of demand, but each has maintained their usage rates overall.
However, as Craig Dick, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Phospholutions. points out, the move towards sustainability has caused ag retailers and their grower-customers to consider ways to improve macronutrient efficiency in their crop fields. For example, look at P.
“Our RhizoSorb technology is designed to tackle one of agriculture’s biggest challenges: Phosphorus inefficiency,” he says. “RhizoSorb 8-39-0 reduces soil tie up and delivers more phosphate into the plant with less applied fertilizer than MAP or DAP. The result is lower cost per acre, reduced application volume, less salt in the soil, and a stronger return-on-investment. Every day, we hear from growers how important these benefits are to their operations.”
In addition to P stabilizers, N stabilizers have also witnessed steady growth over the past 25 years.
“Fertilizer prices and other cost pressures incentivized farmers to maximize the efficiency of their nitrogen applications,” Tim Laatsch, Director of Agronomy North America, Koch Agronomic Services, told CropLife® Magazine in a 2025 interview. “[This increased] interest in using stabilizers to maximize their yields and profitability.”
“2024 proved to be a good year for the nitrogen stabilizer business,” Alan Sparkman, Senior Vice President of Sales, North America, Verdesian Life Sciences, told CropLife in that same article. “The overall nitrogen business ebbs and flows with total corn acres planted and nitrogen stabilizers follow those trends. Even though corn acres for 2024 were slightly down, according to USDA numbers, it ranked as the eighth highest planted acreage in the U.S. since 1944. Growers recognize that nutrient efficiency benefits not only the environment but also their bottom line, so they continue to rely on these tools to best manage their fertilizer applications and input dollars.”
Besides macronutrients, micronutrients have also enjoyed widespread and lasting growth over the past quarter century.
“The micronutrient market in the U.S. continues to have growth opportunities,” Jake Socherman, General Manager at Verdesian Life Sciences, told CropLife in a 2024 interview. “We’ve seen increased interest from dealers who want to include a micronutrient product that can be applied with their pre-plant fertilizers yet be available during the upcoming growing season.”
When it comes to why micronutrients have been able to maintain this market growth throughout the past 25 years, Helena Agri Enterprises Jason Gregory, Brand Manager, Nutritionals and Coron Brands, cites two words: Yield potential.
“As we continue to see our yields grow, our crops will simply need more nutrients to perform at this level,” Greogory told CropLife in a 2024 interview. “It isn’t any different than an elite athlete; as athletes train their bodies to reach their full potential competitively, they continue to fine-tune the calories/nutrients they take in daily. We will continue to evolve how we feed our elite yielding plants to gain the most potential as well.”
David Annis, Market Development Manager at Tiger-Sul Products, agreed. “Farmers and consultants have been expressing more concern that deficiencies in zinc, manganese, and copper are limiting crop yields,” said Annis in that same CropLife article from 2024. “Farmers and consultants are also commenting that they are seeing micronutrient deficiencies where they’ve never experienced them before.”
Another crop nutrition product that has seen continued growth over the past 25 years is sulfur. According to Don Sutton, Director of Sales at Tiger-Sul, this trend dates back to a development from a decade before the turn of the century.
“The Clean Air Act of 1990 brought significant changes, removing sulfur from fuels, industry, and power plant emissions,” says Sutton. “The intended effect — reducing acid rain — was achieved, but it also eliminated sulfur deposition. Growers no longer received ‘free’ sulfur from the atmosphere. At the same time, crop yields greatly increased, extracting more sulfur from the soil. Over the past five, 10, and 15 years, sulfur deficiency has begun to appear. A lack of sulfur in the soil can be a yield-limiting factor, as well as affect nitrogen utilization and the availability of other micros.”
To address this issue, Tiger-Sul introduced a product called Tiger XP in 2015.
“Tiger-Sul has evolved in many ways to meet changing sulfur demands since 1990,” he says. “The creation of our patented product, Tiger XP, is recognized as the safest sulfur bentonite product on the market today. Its handling characteristics make Tiger XP an excellent choice for bulk facilities and precision applications.”
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