How a 300-acre vegetable operation cut fertilizer spend by 35% and added $287/acre — without losing yield.
A 14-week deployment of BAU's agronomic rule engine on a coastal-plain row-crop operation, followed by a full crop cycle of measurement. Figures illustrate the methodology in production.
Fertilizer + amendment spend per acre
Net contribution per acre (blended rotation)
Payback on the BAU pilot engagement
Client snapshot
Coastal Plain Vegetable Operation
Family-run row-crop operation in the North Carolina coastal plain. Mixed rotation of sweet potato, leafy greens, and cucurbits across 312 tillable acres.
- Acreage
- 312 tillable, 4 fields
- Rotation
- sweet potato › leafy greens › cucurbits
- Soils
- sandy loam, low CEC, chronic K drawdown
- Irrigation
- drip + overhead, well-fed
- Markets
- regional wholesale + 2 retail contracts
The challenge
Three structural problems, one root cause.
- Calendar-driven fertility. Applications scheduled off a season template, not soil-moisture or tissue indicators. ~22% of N applied during a measurable leaching window.
- No closed loop on outcomes. Yield and rejection rates tracked, but never tied back to the applications that caused them.
- Supplier-recommended rates. Rate cards from two regional suppliers were 18–24% above what the agronomic literature supports for these cultivars on low-CEC sandy loam.
Root cause: No written, queryable rule engine linking soil, weather, crop stage, and economic threshold to a specific recommendation.
The results
12-month outcome — measured, not modeled.
| Metric | Baseline | After BAU (12 mo.) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Synthetic N applied (lb/ac) | 182 | 121 | −34% |
| Fertilizer + amendment spend ($/ac) | $412 | $268 | −$144 |
| Marketable yield index | 1.00 | 1.06 | +6% |
| Crop loss to nutrient stress events | 9.2% | 3.1% | −6.1 pts |
| Net contribution ($/ac, blended) | $1,840 | $2,127 | +$287 |
What the numbers don't show: Two leafy-greens loads were rejected in the prior season for tissue burn linked to a late-cycle N application. Zero rejections in the post-BAU cycle. The retail contract was renewed at a 4% price step.
Methodology note
How to read this packet.
This is a representative composite. Operation profile, rule counts, and outcome ranges are drawn from BAU's pilot methodology and what comparable coastal-plain vegetable operations have achieved when an equivalent rule-engine discipline is installed. It is not a single named client. Named-client case studies are available in the investor data room after NDA execution.
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