Kula Bio

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

The Haber-Bosch process of producing nitrogen fertilizer has led to massive advancements in global agricultural productivity. However it is also the cause of a lot of agriculture’s environmental impact. New companies are emerging to try to disrupt this process to provide more sustainable sources of nitrogen for farmers. One such company is Kula Bio, which Renée Vassilos of The Nature Conservancy says has some exciting technology.

Vassilos… “What happens often is over-application of nitrogen fertilizer or fall application of nitrogen fertilizer. There's a tremendous amount of data around that not being the optimal choice from an agronomic perspective, an economic perspective, and then an environmental perspective, yet it continues to happen. And what we understand is part of that is the logistics challenge. It's abundant and cheap in the fall.”

Kula Bio hopes to equip farmers with low cost bioreactors to make their own nitrogen fertilizer.

Vassilos… “They believe they can get the cost so low that you would be able to set up bio-reactors on farm. And so the idea that we could disrupt the distribution channel, which we recognize is one of the challenges to truly adjusting practices at scale, in terms of nitrogen management. That could be extraordinary - the implications of that could just be extraordinary.”

More information at www.kulabio.com.