Pea, lentil and oat hulls will be used to create the fertilizer
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The community of Rosetown, Sask. is getting a new fertilizer plant.
Protein Industries Canada, along with AGT Foods, Lucent, NuWave Research, IN10T and Aberhart Ag Solutions are working together on the $19 million project.
The fertilizer facility will use pea, lentil and oat hulls to create a sustainable, non-polluting, climate-positive micronutrient fertilizer called Soileos.
Once operational, the plant will have the capacity to produce about 6,500 tons of fertilizer per year. The plant will also create 25 jobs in the community.
Stakeholders conducted field trials of Soileos on durum, lentils and peas.
The trials “demonstrated how Soileos transports zinc, manganese, and iron to plants – leading to improved protein content, yields and soil health, while increasing returns for farmers, minimizing environmental impacts, and bringing value to low-value by-products,” a May 26 release says.
The Saskatchewan ag community is pleased to see this new opportunity come to the province.
This fertilizer plant represents a new way to diversify markets, said Carl Potts, executive director of Sask Pulse.
“What’s attractive for producers is the potential for more extensive end use applications for pulses,” he told Farms.com. “In the pulse sector we have a strategy of trying to increase demand by having 25 per cent of our domestic production in the end use market by 2025.”
Canada exports pea and lentil products to about 100 countries around the world, but around a handful of countries account for the majority of those exports.
Finding new uses for pulse crops can help the industry fill gaps, Potts said.
“What’s exciting is we can increase demand in other areas and even reduce market access restraints,” he said.
Protein Industries Canada expects the new plant to be up and running by October 2022.