Sustainable Fertilizer brings Regenerative Agriculture into the Mainstream
By Neil Wiens
Whether we like it or not, agriculture must change to meet today’s challenges. I say this as someone who grew up on the farm near Watrous, Saskatchewan, and who loves farming, partly because I love the independence. I don’t like being told what to do. But I’m also prepared to change when I can see which way the world is going. If you don’t adapt with the times, you don’t survive, and countries around the world are changing their farming practices to improve soil health, meet ever higher consumer standards, and to address the challenge of climate change.
We might not agree with how government approaches these challenges but it’s also unwise to pretend that these trends aren’t real. It’s even harder to ignore what our soil tells us. And it’s pretty much impossible to ignore whether our profit and loss statements are printed in black ink or red. So, do we fight global trends, or do we see them as opportunities? The answer is clear. We do what farmers have always done, we meet change head on and become more successful than ever.
As a biochemist and nutritionist, I’ve been concerned about the amount of salt that synthetic fertilizers leave in the soil. Too much salt kills the microbes that make up healthy topsoil, the beating heart of a productive farm, and we’ve been pouring synthetic fertilizer and salt onto our fields for decades. Over time it crushes yields. My team and I set out to find solutions and we found one. What we didn’t realize at the time is that our solution to improving soil health would also tackle another of the biggest problems now facing farmers, climate change.
If you farm, you know that GHG emissions from agriculture are under scrutiny from Ottawa and almost every national government in the world. Agriculture feeds the planet but in producing food, farm operations emit greenhouse gases, roughly 25% of all worldwide emissions. Half of the emissions from agriculture come from the use of synthetic fertilizer. Meanwhile, farmers themselves are among the hardest hit by climate change. The Government of Canada’s solution is to propose a 30% reduction in emissions from nitrous oxide, most of which comes from the application of synthetic fertilizers. Our solution is better in every way, a regenerative mineral based fertilizer that maintains or improves yield, without the heavy salt load and without the nitrous oxide that is a major by-product of synthetic fertilizer.
Our approach uses recycled organic matter, and elemental mineral sources. The result is a fertilizer that restores the nutrient balance of the soil, meaning higher yields, reduced input costs, and bigger profits. Soil health is restored, while also addressing a problem that can no longer be ignored. Every year Canadians waste approximately 2.3 million tonnes of food worth more than $20 billion. This food rots in our landfills, emitting harmful methane into the atmosphere, compounding climate change. Our manufacturing process turns this waste into healthier soil and reduced emissions.
By diverting this waste food from landfills, we turn waste into economic opportunity. Because we manufacture in facilities close to end users, we bring jobs to rural communities, and our approach avoids or reduces about 200,000 CO2e tonnes annually, the total annual CO2 emitted by a community of 15,000 people. These numbers will only improve as more and more farmers fully embrace this new technology.
Change can be painful, but we also know that government and public demand for solutions to climate change will only grow louder. It’s better if farmers and entrepreneurs address those challenges before governments impose solutions. We think we’ve made a good start at doing just that.
Neil Wiens is an agriculture scientist and the founder of Replenish Nutrients, an Alberta-based, publicly traded, regenerative fertilizer manufacturing company trading under the symbol ERTH on the Canadian Securities Exchange. For more information, visit our website https://replenishnutrients.com.