Iowa firm receives $4.67 million grant to expand fertilizer production
At the annual Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Aug. 28 the U.S. Department of Agriculture is partnering with American business owners to expand innovative domestic fertilizer production, creating jobs in rural communities and strengthening local economies.
The department is awarding $35 million for seven projects in seven states through the Fertilizer Production Expansion Program, which is funded by the Commodity Credit Corporation, Vilsack said at the annual Farm Progress Show. This program provides grants to independent business owners to help them modernize equipment, adopt new technologies, build production plants and more.
The funding advances President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to grow the nation’s economy from the middle out and bottom up, he said. One of the recipients is a $4.67 million grant to Quality Flow Environmental LLC, Maquoketa, Iowa.
This Rural Development investment will be used to construct a new thermochemical manufacturing facility for production of a fertilizer product made from dairy waste. Quality Flow Environmental LLC utilizes waste generated from a contiguous dairy into a carbon product through a thermochemical process called torrefaction.
The process yields a high quality, viable fertilizer product from animal waste feedstock. This facility is expected to generate 540.66 tons of solid carbon-ready product annually, which will be made available to local producers in the region.
To date, the USDA has invested $286.6 million in 64 projects across 32 states through FPEP. These projects have created 768 new jobs in communities across the country and will increase domestic fertilizer production by more than 5.6 million tons.
“The Biden-Harris administration continues to make innovative investments that bolster rural communities and support farmers, ranchers and small business owners,” Vilsack said. “The investments announced today will increase domestic fertilizer production and strengthen our supply chain, while creating good-paying jobs to benefit all Americans.”
These investments will boost domestic fertilizer production and lower costs for U.S. farmers, he said. The largest grant was for nearly $12 million to AdvanSix, an ammonium sulfate producer in Hopewell, Virginia. The company currently provides 31,400 ag producers with ammonium sulfate on the East Coast and in the Midwest.
Through this project, AdvanSix will expand its operational capacity by 195,000 tons per year, increasing total production to more than 36,000 producers. The USDA is also making awards to facilities in California, New York, Oregon, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Biden and the USDA created FPEP to combat issues facing American farmers due to rising fertilizer prices, which more than doubled between 2021 and 2022 due to a variety of factors such as war in Ukraine and a lack of competition in the fertilizer industry.
