Seven projects in seven states will receive funding through Fertilizer Production Expansion Program.
August 28, 2024
At the annual Farm Progress Show being held this week in Boone, Iowa, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that USDA is awarding an additional $35 million for seven projects in seven states through the Fertilizer Production Expansion Program (FPEP), which is funded by the Commodity Credit Corporation. The program provides grants to independent business owners to help them modernize equipment, adopt new technologies, build production plants and more.
“Today, we are pleased to announce a continuation of our effort to expand more fertilizer production in this country, so we are more self-reliant and more dependent on our own capacities as opposed to capacities from some other country,” Vilsack told the audience.
He added that the funding will not only expand production, but it also allows the U.S. the opportunity “to develop new ways of fertilizing to reduce costs and a better understanding of when and where and how.”
The latest round of investments includes:
Nearly $5 million to construct a new thermochemical manufacturing facility for production of a fertilizer product made from dairy waste. Located in Maquoketa, Iowa, Quality Flow Environmental LLC, a leader in water quality and treatment, utilizes waste generated from a contiguous dairy into a carbon product through a thermochemical process called torrefaction. The process yields a high quality, viable fertilizer product from animal waste feedstock. This facility is expected to generate 540,66 tons of solid carbon-ready product annually which will be made available to local producers in the region
Dramm Corp. in Wisconsin will use a $776,000 grant to increase their production capacity and expand their network of customers and farmers while reducing their carbon footprint and increasing employee safety. Using fish offal collected from commercial and sport fishermen, Dramm produces a liquid fish fertilizer suitable for organic and traditional farming while keeping millions of pounds of waste out of landfills and fresh waterways.
In Virginia, AdvanSix, an ammonium sulfate producer, will expand a facility with an almost $12 million grant. The company currently provides 31,400 ag producers with ammonium sulfate on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Through this project, AdvanSix will expand their operational capacity by 195,000 tons per year, increasing total production to more than 36,000 producers.
USDA is also making awards to facilities in California, Iowa, New York, Oregon and Tennessee.
To date, USDA has invested $286.6 million in 64 projects across 32 states through FPEP. These projects alone will increase domestic fertilizer production by over 5.6 million tons.
“We’re just beginning this process. We have more projects that we’re in the process of reviewing from an environmental standpoint,” Vilsack said, adding that more announcements will be forthcoming in the next few months
President Biden and USDA created FPEP to combat issues facing American farmers due to rising fertilizer prices, which more than doubled between 2021 and 2022 due to a variety of factors such as war in Ukraine and a lack of competition in the fertilizer industry. The Administration committed up to $900 million through the Commodity Credit Corporation for FPEP.
Vilsack's full address from the Farm Progress Show can be viewed here.
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