When it comes to cutting costs, it's often easier to cut out one segment of a budget than it is to trim back the entire budget. However, when it comes to trimming a fertilizer budget, easy is seldom sensible. The likely result is yield loss from an out of balance approach to meeting crop nutrient needs. Helping customers understand and make the right decision is simply the right thing to do, said Dick Camp, Kronos Micronutrients.

"We encourage people to look hard at their micronutrient needs and explain that micronutrients are often like the catalyst in epoxy glue. The main components don't work without it," he said. "When you sit down and draw a zinc response curve, its nothing new for most of these guys."

"This is the time to really study soil tests and consider using tissue tests to track nutrient use," advised Jeff Ivan, marketing manager, Tiger-Sul. "To get the best yields at the best return, it is critical to keep soil fertility in balance and not cut back on nutrients that may be limiting crop yield."

Kipp Smallwood, Tetra Micronutrients, is confident such marketing messages resonate much better with growers than they would have not too many years ago. He believes they realize they need micronutrients as well as N, P and K.

"They realize they have to deal with the entire spectrum of a plant's nutrient needs," he said. "Years ago, they would have just cut micros out.

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