Jordan McDonald of Emerging Tech Brew writes about two startups that are using biology to create fertilizer.
- Nitrogen fertilizer has played an essential role in increasing crop yields to feed a growing global population with less land, but the process to make the fertilizer is greenhouse gas intensive.
- Startups including Pivot Bio and Joyn Bio are on a mission to reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture by cultivating nature-based solutions.
- Joyn Bio is harnessing microbes to imitate a natural process called fixation–which occurs when bacteria in the soil pulls nitrogen from the air and converts it into ammonia, which helps the plant grow.
- Joyn has raised $200 million and is hoping to bring a product to market in the next several years.
“Relying on biological processes eliminates the nitrous-oxide emissions that occur in synthetic fertilizer production, which have 300x the warming potential of carbon dioxide and accounted for 7% of all US GHG emissions in 2020, according to the EPA. It can also prevent nitrogen from leaching into and contaminating nearby water sources, a common side effect of using synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.”
Read the full article here.
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