How to Combat High Phosphorus Prices Without Cutting Fertilizer Rates
Like a lot of other farmers, when I got my 2026 DAP and MAP prices, I was stunned. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I started thinking about my options.
My first thought was just to cut my dry fertilizer rates. But deep down, I know that the easiest way to fight low prices is to grow more bushels—and that’s hard to do with less fertilizer.
That’s when I took off my farmer hat and put on my Huma sales hat. I realized there are better ways to stretch fertilizer dollars without sacrificing yield.
Two Ideas Jumped Out Right Away:
1. Use SUPER PHOS®
2. Release the phosphorus already in the soil that isn’t plant-available
SUPER PHOS: A SMARTER PHOSPHORUS SOURCE
In the past, I’ve mostly thought of SUPER PHOS as a starter fertilizer—especially as a replacement for 10-34-0 in corn. Historically, it couldn’t compete price-wise with DAP or MAP. But for 2026, that’s no longer true.
SUPER PHOS, powered by Huma’s Micro Carbon Technology®, gives you a big advantage. I’m looking at using it in my burndown or pre-emerge application. Just one gallon of SUPER PHOS delivers the equivalent of 50 units of P2O5—and because it’s complexed with carbon, it’s more available to the plant and less likely to get tied up in the soil.
K-HUME®: UNLOCKING THE PHOSPHORUS YOU ALREADY PAID FOR
The other piece of the puzzle is tapping into the nutrients that are already in the soil but not available to the crop.
That’s where K-HUME comes in. It’s one of my favorite Huma products—a dry granular humate treated with potassium hydroxide. That treatment means when K-HUME hits moisture, it starts releasing humic acids right away.
An untreated dry humate can take years to fully break down, but K-HUME releases within one growing season. Those humic acids help free up tied-up nutrients, especially phosphorus, so plants can use what’s already there.
Adding K-HUME to my 2026 fertilizer mix will help me reduce overall phosphorus costs while improving efficiency and soil health at the same time.
THE BOTTOM LINE
When fertilizer prices spike, it’s easy to just cut rates. But thinking outside the box—using tools like SUPER PHOS and K-HUME—can help us get more from what we’ve got.
The goal isn’t to spend less—it’s to spend smarter and make every pound of phosphorus count.
Related Posts
Ducks Walking on Water?
by Heather Jennings, PE Bio Energizer® Reduces Sludge Over 40% at Utah Municipal WTP The case study described below was a project that I worked on with a small-lagoon municipal system so overwhelmed with solids that state action was being taken. The ducks on the other side of the lagoon from me literally looked as
4R Plus: Nutrient Management and Conservation for Healthier Soils
By now, most of us in agriculture have been made aware of the “4Rs” Nutrient Stewardship initiative—Right Source, Right Time, Right Rate, and Right Place—developed by The Fertilizer Institute, International Plant Nutrition Institute, Fertilizer Canada, and International Fertilizer Association. The 4Rs program advocates the implementation of best management practices that optimize the efficiency of fertilizer
Moving Closer to Farmers
Just as all politics are local, all farming is local. Terrain, soils, weather patterns, market access and cultural production practices vary dramatically across the Fruited Plain, as do the issues and concerns shaping ag policy. So it only makes sense for the entity that combines politics and farming to go local. Because in an urbanized city located on the banks of the Potomac, run by elephants and donkeys, you don’t see many cows, pigs or chickens, much less corn, wheat or almonds.
