**4—Uncjsttr Farming, Saturday, July 5,1980
Improved soil test for lime starts July 31 at
UNIVERSITY PARK -
The Penn State Soil Testing
Service will switch to a new
lime requirement analysis
as of July 31. The new
method, known as SMP, was
described July 1 during a
regional meeting of crop
scientists at the State
Bumgardner addresses Penn Ag
LANCASTER - Gerald
Bumgardner, vice-president
for the gram division of
Ralston Purina, was key
note speaker at Penn Ag
Industries’ annual gram
meeting Monday night.
To an audience of ap
proximately 100 diners, he
challenged the audience to
make markets their
business.
According to Don Part,
executive vice-president of
Penn Ag, Bumgardner
termed a market “what
people think is going to
happen.” Park said the
speech was “not a typical
outlook presentation, but one
presenting thought
processes.”
Park said Bumgardner
stated new factors with
bearings on the markets are
edging out the old chartist
way of making market
predictions Worldwide
money funds and a global
interest in commodities
investment are making a
computer analyst prediction
more necessary.
Park said Bumgardner
gave an interesting concept
on the gram carryover
Rather than comparing with
alarm the gram today to that
of 1960, Bumgardner gave
facts to support the theory
University.
The revamped soil
analysis was discussed by
Richard H. Fox, Penn State
soil scientist, addressing the
joint meeting of the Nor
theastern Branch, American
Society of Agronomy, and
that the population and
consumption have increased
at approximately the same
rate as the gram carryover
or possibly a bit more.
Park said the charts
tended to show a disparity in
prices between what far
mers got for their gram and
what it cost to produce it.
Park said that while
historically the costs have
risen in a parallel pattern,
the separation now indicates
that the fanner is due an
adjustment. Costs are, he
said, apparently rising at a
faster rate than the prices
the farmer receives.
As for the government
getting out of the gram
business and the end to the
embargo, Park said
Bumgardner stated it is a
political year and the answer
would depend on who you
ask.
Park said the speaker
indicated about 58.7 percent
of the world’s coarse grains
are owned by the U.S. and of
that, a substantial portion is
under government
programs Approximately 70
percent of the U.S. stocks
are isolated by government
control from the free
market. This Bumgardner
said means that 43 percent of
the world coarse gram
the Eastern Division of the
Canadian Societj of
Agronomy
The SMP soil analysis
method was adopted when
comparison tests found that
the Woodruff lime
requirement method - the
stocks are under U.S. con-
Wheat stocks, Park said,
28.8 percent are in the U.S.
with 56 percent of that under
loan or reserve. 16 percent of
world stock and available
supplies of wheat are under
U.S. government programs.
Park said the figure the
government indicated it
would purchase at the start
of the embargo has now been
reached. He said
Bumgardner questioned
whether that would be a sign
the government would
discontinue purchases.
For yields to equal last
year’s grain harvest,
Bumgardner said weather
would have to be absolutely
perfect m North America,
Europe and China during the
next few months.
Also during the evening’s
program, Penn Ag showed a
slide presentation on careers
m agribusiness which is
available to members at no
cost for display at meetings.
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test formerly used - was
underestimating, by half,
the amount of lime needed to
raise the level of acid soils to
pH 7.0.
“If a farmer was trying to
grow a crop sensitive to acid
soil, such as alfalfa, he
would undoubtedly have
obtained less than optimum
yield,” Fox stated.
The SMP method was the
best of six tests. SMP is an
acronym using the
developers names -
Shoemaker, McLean, and
Pratt. The amount of lime
predicted by the SMP
method was close to the
actual amount required over
the whole range of lime
needs.
Changing to the SMP
method had little significant
effect on potassium or
magnesium fertilizer
recommendations, it was
noted. This was verified with
a randomly selected sam
pling of 48 soils with pH
values less than 7.0.
Fox said the average
amount of lime recom
mended for the 48 soils was
2.5 tons per acre with the
SMP method, as compared
to an average 1.8 tons per
acre with ine Woodruff
method. This is an average
increase of 39 per cent
Recommendations for
soils with pH less than 5.5
may be as much as 100 per
cent higher than earlier. For
soils with pH values above
6.3, the new recom
mendations will be similar to
the old.
To determine the most
accurate lime testing
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method for Pennsylvania, 20
agricultural soils were
selected from throughout the
state as typical of those most
frequently analyzed. The
average pH level of these
soils was 5.7 with a range
from 4.7 to 6.4.
The soils were more acid
than most well-managed
agricultural soils, Fox
pointed out, but were in the
soil acidity range where the
lime recommendation is
most critical.
In testing the 20 soils, they
were treated with different
lime rates, moistened, and
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stored with alternate wetting
and drying cycles for six
months. Then the soil pH
levels were measured.
Fox said this is the most
accurate laboratory method
available to predict the
amount of lime needed to
raise the soil pH to 7.0 in the
field.
The Penn State
agronomists then compared
these precise lime
requirement values with
estimates from the Woodruff
and five other quick test
methods. The SMP method
was the best of the six.
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