Local company presents fertilizer alternative to United Nations

WELCOME - An alternative fertilizer venture from Martin County-based Easy Environmental Solutions Inc. made enough headway to be presented to organizations and national representatives from around the world at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 21.

Having worked with thousands of fertilizer plants and feed mills as the leader of Easy Automation, CEO Mark Gaalswyk has worked on environmental solutions over the last few years, using an ethanol plant in Emmitsburg, Iowa, as a testing ground for renewable energies.

Regarding what was presented to the UN, Gaalswyk heard of a product called Terreplenish that had been around for about 10 years. Terreplenish uses liquid microbials to act in place of standard fertilizers.

After testing this technology in a few experiments, Easy Environmental Solutions and Easy Automation developed an automated system that they call EasyFEN to create an alternative type of fertilizer.

"You feed it anything green [biomass and food waste]," Gaalswyk said. "Put it in the hopper on the right-hand side. It shreds it up. There’s a whole shredding technology that we have to get it to the perfect particle size that you want to do depending on what’s coming in. If someone pulled in with a semi load of corn silage, 70 percent of that is juice."

From there, once the liquid is extracted, it is analyzed, and components from one or more of three additive totes are added based on the computer analysis to make the fertilizer the machine is fed. After 72 hours, he said it makes two gallons per acre of fertilizer.

To test it even further, Easy Environmental Solutions collaborated with a group in Somalia to see the benefits it could provide for their crops and aid against starvation. The fertilizer not only gave positive crop results, but it also had a beneficial side effect.

When speaking with farmers from Somalia, Gaalswyk said one of the farmers could barely feed his family, only making cents a day. As such, his five sons were considering turning to piracy. With the results from EasyFEN-made fertilizer, Gaalswyk said the farmer makes enough to provide a sustainable life for his sons now.

In addition, Gaalswyk said the Terreplenish used to make this fertilizer cannot be converted into bomb-making materials, like common fertilizer is.

Based on the results compiled in Somalia, Gaalswyk met with some sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East to discuss potentially using the technology to help with the hunger crises in Africa.

After these and other discussions, Easy Environmental Solutions was recently invited to speak during Climate Week New York City with the United Nations General Assembly. Gaalswyk said they wanted other countries to be aware of what Easy Environmental Solutions is doing to help eliminate starvation.

There were several factors Gaalswyk said they sought to highlight in their UN presentation.

"What we were presenting to the different leaders was how this was an answer to starvation, and a good investment," he said. "It depends on if you’re talking to a country that has starving people or you’re talking to a sovereign wealth fund. We also talked about how they could be rapidly deployed. Right now people are dying. We don’t need a solution six years from now. We need to be building these boxes and shipping them out immediately so that we can keep people from dying of starvation."

With positive feedback received on the evidence and testimony presented at the UN, Easy Environmental Solutions is taking the next step by installing an EasyFEN system, with a team included, getting it up and running, in Kenya. Now, Gaalswyk said 10 countries are looking at this project, and quotes have been sent on over two dozen EasyFEN machines.

For a company from Martin County to be making strides in this arena, Gaalswyk said it can bring pride to the entirety of Southern Minnesota.

"To help solve starvation in the world, like I told my wife, one of my goals is if they just put in my tombstone, he helped eliminate starvation in the world," he said. "We bring [leaders] in from around the world. We can show them the EasyFEN being built and show how it’s being put into use and helping both fertilize and clean water."