Martin County company welcomes Ghana representatives
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WELCOME - Four representatives from Ghana, including Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture Hon. John Dumelo, visited with Easy Environmental Solutions in Welcome on Friday to discuss their EasyFEN fertilizer machine.
He was joined by Savanna Pride Ltd. CEO Issifu Harruna, Director Saaka Ahmed Dan and Team Member Nurudeen Shakibu. Easy Environmental Solutions Vice President of Global Operations Africa, Middle East and Europe, Nathan Carpenter, said with EasyFEN, they are able to help countries around the world create greater sovereignty from a fertilizer perspective.
"We’re looking at improving food security through localized production of readily available fertilizer through readily available resources," he said. "Doing that on a commercial scale. Soil health is incredibly important to us, as well as it being affordable to the farmer. I can’t stress that enough. You can do really good things in this world, but if they end up costing the farmer more, you’re going to have that much more of a problem selling it. You need to have something affordable on the ground."
With bringing in fertilizer from other countries, Carpenter said issues in the world today include issues with shipping lanes, disruptions of imports and how labor-intensive transportation and mining of fertilizer is.
Carpenter pointed to a University of Ghana study they did where with traditional fertilizer, they produced 7.92 tons of rice per hectare, while with 50 percent conventional and Terreplenish liquid microbial fertilizer which would be used in EasyFEN machines, they produced 8.86 tons of rice per hectare.
"About one ton extra of product per hectare, or a 12 percent increase," Carpenter said. "For a farmer, those are the numbers that need attention. When you’re talking about reducing inputs, reducing costs, but increasing yield, that’s a difference maker right there. Those are the things that we want to build on, and something we’re very proud of to see."
With this meeting, Carpenter said they were looking to move toward local production of EasyFEN fertilizer in Ghana with four practical steps. One, help with defining a route to initial purchase of their product. Two, designate counterparts who can work with them on the implementation. Three, bring a suitable Ghanaian commercial and financing partner into the discussion to work with Savanna Pride. Four, help with assessment of the local requirements for a production project.
"If there’s nothing else you take from this, we are phased implementation," Carpenter said. "We want to show you that the product works. We want you to come to Kenya to see the machine, and we want to help do the best kind of business, which is good for the farmer, which is good for the investor, which is good for the country, and ultimately good for these environmental systems as well."
After the presentation, Dumelo asked if this is more like a booster that applies to increase the nutrients and make things balanced with applied fertilizer. Easy Environmental Solutions CEO Mark Gaalswyk said yes and no.
"What it will do is pull nitrogen out of the air," he said. "Instead of importing nitrogen from Canada, the U.S., wherever, it’ll pull out of the air because there’s nitrogen in the air. The other part of it is the phosphorus. It’ll release phosphorus into a form usable for the crops. It will also pull moisture out of the air and act like a biofungicide. We envision it replacing part or all of conventional fertilizer, depending on how much nitrogen and phosphorus you use for each crop."
Dumelo then asked if farmers would need to use it again after the first application, in the next cropping season. Gaalswyk said they would use it again, but each application would work toward making the soil better and better and need less to get the same yield. He also said the EasyFEN fertilizer can be applied very easily.
"Let’s say you’ve got a small farmer, you can dump a little bit into a bucket and then put it on," Gaalswyk said. "If they have a hand sprayer, they can spray it on. If you have a drone, you can do drone. If you’re already putting on other herbicides, they can mix it with the herbicides."
After their presentation at the Easy Automation Office in Welcome, Gaalswyk and Carpenter finished the Ghana delegation's visit with a tour of Easy Environmental Solutions facility locations in Emmetsburg, Iowa and Mankato, Minn.