(Radio Iowa) – North America’s first commercial-scale “green ammonia” field trial is underway in Boone. Landus Cooperative partnered with the company Talusag to produce farm fertilizer using solar energy, air and water. Hiro Iwanaga is C-E-O of the start-up. “Traditional ammonia depends on, depends on a global supply chain that’s costly, that’s unreliable, that’s carbon intensive. We manufacture closer to where the product is used. We cut down risk while giving farmers a stable, more predictable source of one of the most critical inputs,” he says. Landus vice president for strategic initiatives, Brian Crowe, says the process reworks the entire system.

“We’re not only changing how fertilizer is produced, but where it’s made, how it gets to our growers,” Crowe says. He says the system in Boone can produce around one ton per day, but a larger scale model being built in Eagle Grove will produce twenty times more.

Earlier this month, Landus applied green ammonia to corn field trial plots on-site and will compare results with control strips throughout the growing season. The partners hope to have green ammonia commercially available next year.