Nitrogen Management 2026

Key Points in this blog:

• Know your soil nitrogen levels- Invest in testing, not hope and guesswork

• Match nitrogen application with soil moisture and yield potential

Nitrogen Management this year, given the dynamics of cost of urea, availability, available soil moisture and yield potential, is an extremely stressful decision-making process.

This year, like no other, there are so many variables that influence the investment.

These variables all impact our decisions, and this year there are many, including:

1. Soil Moisture- Should be the primary driver for decision-making in 2026. If you are struggling to make a decision, always revert to this.

2. Urea price- It would appear that high urea prices are here to stay, at least for the short term. This is the reality this year, accept it.

3. Urea/Nitrogen availability- Currently is a bigger issue than the price. It is a fact that urea supplies have been compromised in recent months, and this will continue for many more. The risks are high for everyone in the supply chain, from manufacturers to fertiliser companies to resellers to you, the end user. There isn’t anybody in that supply chain that will want to carry any stocks because the risk vs the margin is so high. Businesses can break in a day on the back of purchasing urea; therefore, everyone in that supply chain would rather sell out of their stocks than have a carryover.

4. Weather forecasts- Our long-term weather forecasts aren’t favourable for rainfall, which sends shivers through the whole supply chain. 

5. Grain prices- Who knows where they could end up by November, and what does that do for demonstrating a return on investment of urea application now. Currently, canola is trading at $750/t F1 barley is $375 ex farm. Dry conditions on the eastern seaboard, dry conditions in major wheat-growing areas of the world, and massive stockfeed demand locally. When you consider a large percentage of crop won't be planted north of Dubbo, it begs the question of where protein wheat will come from in the next calendar year.

6. Background Soil N levels- This is the one variable that is in your control. Knowing what Nitrogen levels are in the soil could save you thousands of dollars this year.

Taking all of these facts into consideration, it becomes a process of elimination to a certain degree when making an investment decision on firstly knowing when to purchase your nitrogen and secondly when to apply it.

As stated previously, the biggest driver for making a decision regarding nitrogen will be soil moisture. Yield potential and likely yield will determine how much nitrogen is required by crop type. The reality of 2026 is that we have very little subsoil moisture, which means we will require an average to above-average growing season to achieve reasonable yields. The 2025 season yield results were phenomenal considering the relatively low crop rainfall. The reason was good management generally, and more critically was a high level of subsoil moisture, which was carried over from 2024.

Opportunities to be spreading in front of a rain event are likely to be limited given the dry outlook, so being organised as always will be critical. This is why I have spoken to many about spreading urea pre-plant and incorporating it with the air seeder if you don’t have a double shoot option.

Using something like Sulphate of Ammonia may well become more realistic, given losses are minimal in comparison to urea. It's likely SOA will be more available than urea this year and if the $/kg of nitrogen are equivalent (of which they have been up to date) then SOA becomes a realistic option in a dry season, particularly if you have a large program to spread pre-rain. Maybe you could consider SOA a week out from a rain event and be spreading urea 2-3 days out from that same event to reduce your risk.

Knowing your N levels

The best investment you will make this year will be testing for your nitrogen levels in the soil. For 2026, I am working on the theory that we will have more soil nitrogen than in most years.

Why?

2025 proteins were largely higher than previous years, which means nitrogen levels were managed well and to the point that for many, there should be surplus nitrogen to carry over into 2026. How do we validate this? The only way is to test. At $1450-$1600/t for urea currently, how can you justify an investment of $100/$200/Ha + with little to no subsoil moisture, not knowing how much is required? It’s pure hitting and hoping.

The accuracy of deep nitrogen testing (for us) in the last five years and developing n budgets based on soil water and yield potential has been extremely effective. Having that data available for 2026 could literally save you thousands at current prices.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see levels close to 100kg/Ha of nitrogen in the soils this year. That is $300/Ha at current values. That’s enough N to grow at least 2t/Ha of protein wheat or 1.2t/Ha of canola. At a decile 3, that’s about where our yield potentials are currently, so there is no need to panic buy nitrogen, as it wouldn’t be required.

Variable Rate Application.

We are about to zonal sample for nitrogen this year for the first time. This zonal sampling is derived from multiple years of yield data (n removal) as well as accumulated Biomass. Obviously, there is sampling involved; however, the more sampling increases the accuracy of the results, reduces variability and enables us to create variable rate application maps to apply the nitrogen where it is exactly required. We also can challenge the theory and set up trial zones within these paddocks via computer software to apply (normal paddock broadacre rates) within the variable rate paddock in multiple replications to hopefully validate the VR theory. Watch this space. Hopefully, the data will follow at the end of the year.

Quick Comparison Table

Crop type	N Removed (kg/t grain)	Typical yield	N Removed (kg/ha)
Wheat	20-25	3-5 t/ha	60-125
Barley	18-22	3-5 t/ha	54-110
Canola	35-45	1.5-3 t/ha	50-135
Lupins	40-50	1.5-3 t/ha	60-150
Faba Beans	45-60	2-4 t/ha	90-240