Tucked into an out-of-the-way corner in northwestern Minnesota, Alexandria is a small town known for its twenty-eight-foot-tall Viking statue and a famous runestone museum. What most of the rest of the state doesn’t know is that this is where a mass slaughter of one of the humblest species of fish is taking place. Each year, a company called Bio Builder Inc. liquefies more than one hundred thousand carp that it procures from commercial fishermen and area municipalities. The fifteen-person outfit, in fact, owes its very existence to the bottom-feeding, lake-degrading fish, which it uses to produce fertilizer products.
Bio Builder launched five years ago, after its precocious principal and founder, Joshua Zeithamer, hit upon an unlikely idea. The then-nineteen-year-old Zeithamer found that combining nutrient-rich liquefied carp tissue with dried distiller’s grain (a corn byproduct of ethanol processing) made for an environmentally friendly, phosphorous-free lawn fertilizer. Rural revitalization grants and a national award from the Future Farmers of America followed, and what started as a high school FFA project evolved over a couple of years into a company that sells a line of ten boutique fertilizer blends to high-end nurseries and agricultural supply stores.
On October 30, 2003, under the bright stage lights at the FFA National Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, Zeithamer was presented with the organization’s American Star in Agribusiness award. The prize, which netted him two thousand dollars and a ten-day trip to Costa Rica, recognized Zeithamer’s carp-and-corn fertilizer innovation and lauded the young entrepreneur for his business savvy.
Zeithamer first saw a market opportunity in the late 1990s, when several Minnesota communities banned the use of lawn fertilizers containing phosphorous, because runoff from treated grass was shown in some studies to spur an unnatural rate of algae growth in lakes. Unchecked, such growth can result in the suffocation of native fish species. At the time, most fertilizers contained some level of phosphorous. Then, on January 1, 2005, Minnesota passed the Phosphorus Lawn Fertilizer Law and became the first state in the nation to institute an outright ban on the use of lawn fertilizers containing phosphorous. Zeithamer’s foresight was sealed and validated with a legislative stamp.
Lately, however, sales have reached a plateau at Bio Builder Inc., and the company’s phosphorous-free fertilizers now account for only three percent of its annual sales. Zeithamer says big fertilizer companies like Scotts Miracle-Gro have jumped on the phosphorus-free wagon, which has brought increased competition. There is also a general lack of public awareness about the ban, and, as there is little or no enforcement of the law, hardware stores still commonly sell fertilizers containing phosphorous. Another challenge, Zeithamer believes, is that the people who care most about the environment—the people who’d be more attuned to the concerns surrounding phosphorus—are not big fertilizer consumers.
“Organic people and tree huggers prefer to go au naturel with their lawns,” Zeithamer said. “They don’t want their yards to be golf-course green.”
This catch-22 for environmentally minded fertilizer companies like Bio Builder is unfortunate, says Brian Horgan, a professor of horticulture science at the University of Minnesota. The perception that all fertilizer is bad for the environment is unfounded, Horgan says; using the right kind of fertilizer to keep your lawn healthy is beneficial to local ecosystems, because rainwater filtered through high-quality dirt is cleaner.
At the other extreme, people who cherish highly manicured, glowing-green grass may have the wrong idea about the importance of phosphorous in lawn fertilizer, according to Jerry Spetzman, a water quality advisor at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Most lawns in the Twin Cities already have adequate natural phosphorous levels. In fact, Spetzman points out, nitrogen, not phosphorous, is responsible for a healthy green luster.
Despite these proverbial snakes in the grass, Bio Builder has managed to expand and diversify its business. In addition to fertilizers, the company sells grass seed and erosion-control products and provides landscaping and aerification services for businesses around Alexandria. While his business is sound, Zeithamer says he may have partially miscalculated the market when Bio Builder was getting off the ground.
“I learned that most people will simply buy the fertilizer that they believe will make their grass the greenest, without looking at many other issues,” Zeithamer said.
Spetzman thinks Zeithamer’s carp concoction may simply be ahead of its time. At a recent conference, Spetzman met with representatives from one of the world’s largest fertilizer companies, who had big news: The corporation was considering a nationwide rollout of a new, phosphorous-free fertilizer.—Stephen Regenold
Leave a Reply Cancel reply