Optimum rate

Jan 16, 2025

Variable rate (VR), as a phrase, is thoroughly uninspiring. Boring. People want to hear about VR about as much as they want to hear about the 50-year-old wool suit I bought at Value Village for $22. I see that now. But optimum rate! That inspires.

In October, I wrote a LinkedIn post about a breakfast conversation I had with Blake Weiseth, who runs Discovery Farm at the Ag In Motion site west of Saskatoon.

“Variable rate is sexy, but it’s not the next logical step for a lot of farmers,” Weiseth said at breakfast. “For many farmers, using a fertilizer blend and rate appropriate for each field is their next step to more precise nutrient management. With field-to-field variability sorted, then let’s tackle in-field variability.”

I shared this quote on LinkedIn and asked, should precision ag advancement follow a step by step path? Or can farms skip from (a) one fertilizer blend and rate for all canola or wheat or pea fields to (c) precise management of zones within each field? This would leap past the middle step of (b) a fertilizer blend and rate appropriate for each field.

The responses were varied and insightful, founded largely on farm and agronomy experience.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.