WISErganic

The concept is simple and genius. Use food waste as an organic fertilizer. WISErganic CEO Larry LeSueur explains how this idea has come to fruition.

LESUEUR: We focus first as a technology company trying to help our local communities reduce and understand why we have so much food waste going on, 133-billion pounds across the U.S., massive problem. We spent about two year researching and trying to understand that waste but also what we do with that food scraps because fundamentally we felt it was a resource and not a waste.

Two years ago they introduced a third generation machine they called the "Harvester."

LESUEUR: We placed and worked with local grocery stores to extract those food scraps before they became waste so that we could actually begin the process of extracting out the nutrients. We were focusing on how could we build a great fertilizer using the inputs that were in the food scraps before they started decomposing and going into the atmosphere.

LeSueur says they've finally gotten that process scaled up.

LESUEUR: It's a 301, it's our label, it's OMRI, it's WSDA and CDFA certified. As organic our process is a very unique process. Now all of that doesn't mean a hill of beans if it doesn't work. Over the last three years we've also been working with a couple of different universities; WSU, Arizona State for the controlled environment as well as private testers in the central basin of Washington and Oregon.

Tomorrow we'll talk more with Larry LeSueur about how WISErganic actually works. They have a booth at this years Washington-Oregon Potato Conference.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.