A system that converts manure into liquid ammonium nitrate fertilizer and clean water is operational at Kinnard Farms in Casco.
Sedron, which develops and operates facilities that upcycle municipal biosolids and agricultural manure, built a Varcor facility at Kinnard Farms to convert manure from the 9,000-cow dairy.
The system takes digestate from the farm’s anaerobic digesters and separates it into three streams: a concentrated liquid ammonium nitrate fertilizer, clean water and dry solids. The liquid product is the only Organic Materials Review Institute Listed ammonium nitrate fertilizer on the market and supplies nitrogen in both ammonium and nitrate forms. F
or Kinnard Farms, the facility replaces the hauling and land application of 120 million gallons of liquid manure a year, which the farm says will take tens of thousands of manure truck trips off local roads.
“We’ve been working toward this for years, and the system is doing exactly what Sedron said it would,” said Lee Kinnard. “The reclaimed nutrients pay for the facility, we get the water back, and our neighbors see fewer trucks on the road. That’s what being a good steward looks like now.”
The fertilizer is available to growers and distributors nationally in 7 percent nitrogen and 10 percent nitrogen grades, produced at Sedron’s facilities in Wisconsin and Indiana, and a 16 percent grade is OMRI Listed and expected to be available for the 2028 growing season.
Sedron holds multiple U.S. patents on the process. The nitrogen is recovered from ammonia already present in manure, most of which would otherwise be lost to the air, and converted by a biological process into a stable ammonium nitrate form; nothing is chemically synthesized. The product gives growers a domestic, year-round source of organic nitrogen that does not depend on natural gas prices or import channels, with the year-over-year supply and consistency that organic crop inputs have rarely offered.
“Organic growers have never had a nitrogen source they could count on year after year,” said Geoff Trukenbrod, Chief Executive Officer of Sedron. “Kinnard Farms is another facility producing it at commercial scale, and it came online on schedule. That is the start of a reliable domestic supply, not a pilot.”
The fertilizer is produced by a thermal process that has been validated by an independent process authority, and the product meets the criteria of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement for biological crop inputs that have gone through a validated treatment process.
Ara Partners, a leading private equity investor in industrial decarbonization, committed up to $500 million to Sedron in April.
