Mass production of fertilizer was one of the most important advances of the past century with roughly half the world's food supply depending on it, but it comes with a large shadow. Between manufacturing and field application, nitrogen fertilizer accounts for five to seven percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The inefficiency is just as striking: global nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency sits at about 33%, meaning roughly two thirds of every tank a farmer buys never reaches the crop. It runs off into waterways, where it drives algae blooms and dead zones, or it volatilizes into the air becoming a high impact greenhouse gas. As our guest Nico puts it in this episode, imagine buying $100 of gasoline and pouring $66 of it on the ground. And because the industry is so centralized, a disruption on one side of the planet can double a farmer's single largest input cost overnight.
Today, Hilary and I are joined by Nico Pinkowski, co-founder and CEO of Nitricity, which is making liquid organic nitrogen fertilizer from almond shells, air, water and renewable power. Farmers can disburse the fertilizer through their irrigation systems, spoon-feeding nitrogen as the crop actually needs it rather than front-loading a season's worth of ammonia into the soil. The result is dramatically lower field emissions, far better nutrient uptake, and a product that competes on price with the animal byproducts that dominate organic farming today. We talk through the new plant Nitricity just finished in California's Central Valley, the multi-year fixed-price contracts that made it financeable, expansion into new geographies, and the reactor breakthroughs opening the door to decarbonize the conventional market. Let's dive in.
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