BOONE, Iowa – The USDA is awarding $35 million for seven projects in seven states through its Fertilizer Production Expansion Program, providing grants to independent business owners to help them modernize equipment, adopt new technologies, and build production plants.

“It allows us the opportunity to develop new ways of fertilizing to reduce costs, and also a better understanding of when, where, and how to fertilize,” said USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, who made the announcement at the 2024 Farm Progress Show, Aug. 27-29, in Boone.

“We know that there are a lot of acres out there that probably we may be over-fertilizing,” he said. “As we develop sensor technology and add information, we can do a better job with the fertilizers we have. The investments announced today will increase domestic fertilizer production, and strengthen our supply chain, while creating good-paying jobs to benefit all Americans.”

The USDA Rural Development’s Fertilizer Production Expansion Program was created in response to the sharp increase in fertilizer prices, which more than doubled from 2021 to 2022, due to factors such as the Ukraine conflict and limited competition in the fertilizer industry, the agency said.

Funded by the USDA Commodity Credit Corp., the program is awarding fertilizer grant funds to facilities in California, Iowa, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

For example, in Gordonsville, Tenn., Nyrstar Tennessee Mines Gordonsville, LLC, was awarded a $9 million grant, which will be used to expand two existing facilities in Gordonsville and New Market, Tenn. Nyrstar, a zinc mining operation, will construct pelletizing plants to produce an agricultural lime additive, which neutralizes soil pH and adds calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc to support crop and plant growth, the USDA said in the company’s award description. (Pelletizing is a method of particle size enlargement in which material fines are processed into pellets or granules).

Through expansion, the USDA said these facilities are expected to generate 370,000 tons of pelletized lime annually, which will be made available to local producers in the region. (The company declined an interview with Farm World for additional comment).

In Maquoketa, Iowa, Quality Flow Environmental, LLC, will use the $4.66 million awarded to them to build a thermo-chemical manufacturing facility that makes fertilizer from dairy waste, generating more than 540,000 tons of solid product a year.

Jack McCarthy, Quality Flow Environmental marketing consultant and company spokesperson, told Farm World, “The Quality Flow Environmental process will separate waste solids from liquids at the site where the cattle are housed.

“The liquids will be further separated into water that will be treated and recycled for use in the livestock operation, or returned to the aquifer (a body of permeable rock which can contain or transmit groundwater), and a nutrient-rich residual liquid that will be transported to a Quality Flow Environmental regional manufacturing hub where it will be processed into a balanced nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium-storable fertilizer that is then packaged and marketed to users in their choice of applications,” he said.

When asked how Maquoketa was chosen to be the new site, he said, “Maquoketa is ideally situated within a 200-mile radius of many cattle farms with whom we’ll be partnering to service the nutrient management component of the Quality Flow Environmental process, and it is close to access to intrastate and interstate transportation for shipping the organic fertilizer, biocoal and biochar, that we will be producing in our Maquoketa-based manufacturing hub.”

(Biocoal is produced at lower temperatures and considered as solid fuel, containing high quantity of volatile matter and lower fix carbon than biochar. Biochar is compressed compounds containing various organic materials, including rice husk, ground nut shells, municipal solid waste, and agricultural waste).

“The dairy farms are very enthusiastic and pushing us to get going,” McCarthy recently told The Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette. “We’re going to have, right in Iowa, an endless supply of fertilizer for farms in this area.”

He told Farm World, “Right now, we expect to be creating 40 to 50 jobs, not including the construction jobs that the facility developer will employ for the building of the manufacturing facility.” He added the company expects to break ground in early to mid-2025 and be in operation by the end of 2025.

To date, the USDA has invested $286.6 million in 64 projects across 32 states through its Fertilizer Production Expansion Program. These projects have created 768 new jobs in communities across the country, and will increase domestic fertilizer production by over 5.6 million tons, the agency said.

“We’re just beginning this process,” Vilsack said. “We have more projects we’re in the process of reviewing from an environmental standpoint, and I’m sure that over the course of the next few months or so, we’ll be making additional announcements.”