Planning for Profit: Soil health with Dr Rob Norton
“One of the issues with P allocation on, say, lentils or chickpeas is that they’re not that responsive in terms of yield, but they do respond, in terms of nitrogen fixation. So phosphorus will stimulate growth, which stimulates nitrogen fixation. So your pulses, and even some of the medic pastures and vetch, for example, they’re usually the first things we cut phosphorus off, in our crop budget. But in fact, what happens is, by doing that, you actually reduce some of the nitrogen input from the legume nitrogen fixation.”
In the final episode in our first series of Planning for Profit, I caught up with Dr Rob Norton to hear his top tips for soil and health and profitability in 2024.
About Dr Rob Norton
Rob Norton has expertise in crop nutrition, farming systems and agronomy. For the past 40 years has worked in education, training and research for the Australian grains industry with various organisations including The University of Melbourne, where he still holds an adjunct position. His research projects at the University of Melbourne concerned crop adaptation, soil health, plant nutrition and plant responses to high carbon dioxide and climate change.
From 2009 until 2017 he was the IPNI Regional Director (Australia New Zealand) where he led a program of applied plant nutrition research and extension projects across Australia. He has been a regular speaker at industry conferences and national and international science conferences.
Following the establishment of his consulting company, Norton Agronomic, he was engaged in soil fertility projects across Africa as well as local consultancies to a range of public and private organisations.
He holds a PhD in crop agronomy and has authored 150 refereed scientific publications, as well as many more articles for industry. His work was recognised in 2017 with awards from the Grains Research and Development Corporation and Fertilizer Australia.
You can find Dr Robert Norton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-norton-22a99547/?originalSubdomain=au
