An Overview Of Our Solution
Conventional agricultural practices are causing a decline in soil fertility by exhausting the carbon-rich organic materials that they contain and reducing soils to their bare mineral components, devoid of life. The destruction of arable soils is close to being irreversible without major changes to agricultural practices. Our company produces a non-crop specific organic microbial biofertilizer called Soil Activator™ that improves soil fertility through the use of non-genetically modified beneficial bacteria to “unlock” nutrients hidden from plants in the soil. We have sponsored field trials in 11 countries in the Americas and established civil society partnerships to have it adopted as an economically and environmentally viable best practice for more sustainable harvests, greater food security, increased soil biodiversity, and healthier agricultural landscapes.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: North America
General Information
Organization type
Corporation
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Forests
Population impacted
Agricultural producers in 11 countries
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
est 5000 ha and growing
Production quantity
ex. 100 kilos
People employed
15 people
Solution
Describe your solution
Our company produces a non-crop specific organic microbial biofertilizer called Soil Activator™ based on 10 years of research and development with the goal of creating a technology that improves soil fertility in agricultural communities where synthetic fertilizers are difficult to source or afford. Soil Activator improves crop productivity naturally by improving the availability of nutrients in the soil by using three strains of non-genetically modified beneficial bacteria to “unlock” nutrients hidden from plants in the soil—fixing atmospheric nitrogen, mineralizing organic materials, solubilizing phosphorus, silicate, and zinc. It does not require major changes to a farmer’s existing practices and is very efficient, requiring only one use per crop cycle to improve the efficacy of soil amendments already in use by the farmer (like manures, composts, or synthetic fertilizers), or increase productivity when no other crop inputs are used. It is also affordable, with application rates and costs low enough that farmers easily earn a favourable return on their investment. Our goal is to change the way agriculture is done around the world by sharing our microbial technology with farmers, teaching them new practices to sustainably obtain higher yields, improving their finances and quality of life. The adoption of Soil Activator as a best practice is leading to more sustainable harvests, greater food security, increased soil biodiversity, and healthier agricultural landscapes.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
Earth Alive Clean Technologies has ensured that Soil Activator is adopted on both economic and environmental grounds, expanding its use and the positive biodiversity impacts that it has in agricultural activities. Soil Activator contains no genetically modified organisms or synthetic chemicals, is based on renewable resources, and has been certified as compliant with organic agriculture norms by Ecocert. It is low cost, in recognition that farmers must to incorporate it into their operating budgets for there to be a lasting adoption of the technology and permanent changes in unsustainable farming practices. We partner with farm distributors in our target countries. These distributors have existing relationships in the farming community, and their agronomists and representatives are trusted experts. One challenge with implementation is that farmers can be hesitant to adopt a new technology until they see the results on their own farm, so we provide our distributors with free material to set up on-farm trials—enough to treat up to 250ha. Since most trials are installed on a small area, this can reach a large number of farmers. We have put in place supports for our distributors to assist with the trial installation and transitioning from trial to adoption: a three-part webinar series to teach about basic soil biological concepts, guidelines and advice for setting up successful on-farm trials, and for collecting good quality data, and interpreting results of the trial so the agronomists and representatives can present the results to their clients. A second obstacle is product registration in each country. The process takes time and money, and often efficacy or safety testing. The registration timeline can be 3 months to over 2 years. We have thus developed a strong regulatory affairs department, and successfully completed registrations in 11 countries. We have budgeted for product registration as part of our implementation plan for 30 countries by 2019.
External connections
Earth Alive has key partners around the world that share our environmental values and work with us implementing new practices to achieve sustainable agriculture. Our main partner in Latin America is Brenntag Latin America, which has representatives in 17 countries. In Africa we have partnered IM-EX Trading, which works in Eastern African countries to bring our technology to farmers, and BraMin farm in Rwanda, the first mechanized and irrigated farm in the area. We have worked closely with CoopCoffees, a green coffee cooperative, committed to building and supporting "Fair and Direct" trade relationships for the benefit of small-scale farmers and their families. In Canada we have partnered with Equiterre, a non-profit organization that concentrate its efforts towards building a social movement encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices. On the scientific side, we have partnered with A&L Laboratories, one of Canada’s largest agricultural and environmental labs, and 3CS Laboratory at McGill University. We are also working with government and university research organizations in developing countries to trial the use of Soil Activator for local needs (e.g. Argan reforestation in Morocco through the Ministry of Water and Forests).
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
Soils are the 2nd largest reservoir of carbon on the planet, holding four times more carbon than all the plants and trees in the world. It is an essential resource and a vital part of the natural environment from which most of the global food supply is produced. But conventional agricultural practices are causing a decline in soil fertility by exhausting the carbon-rich organic materials that they contain and reducing soils to their bare mineral components, devoid of life. Nearly 33% of the world’s adequate or high-quality food-producing land has been lost due to erosion or pollution in the past 40 years. 40% of the remaining agricultural soil is classed as degraded or seriously degraded. Troublingly, the decline has occurred at a time when the world’s demand for food has been rapidly increasing. It is close to being irreversible without major changes to agricultural practices.
Describe the context in which you are operating
Conventional agricultural practices are causing a decline in soil fertility by exhausting the carbon-rich organic materials that they contain and reducing soils to their bare mineral components, devoid of life. The destruction of arable soils is close to being irreversible without major changes to agricultural practices. Our company produces a non-crop specific organic microbial biofertilizer called Soil Activator™ that improves soil fertility through the use of non-genetically modified beneficial bacteria to “unlock” nutrients hidden from plants in the soil. We have sponsored field trials in 11 countries in the Americas and established civil society partnerships to have it adopted as an economically and environmentally viable best practice for more sustainable harvests, greater food security, increased soil biodiversity, and healthier agricultural landscapes.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Soil organisms perform vital functions in the soil and represent a large portion of global terrestrial biodiversity. They carry out a range of processes important for soil health and fertility. For example, bacteria transform organic matter into plant nutrients that are assimilated by plants, help improve soil aggregate stability, water infiltration, and water-holding capacity, and form one of the foundations of the soil food web. Soil Activator increases microbial activity in soils and leads to an overall improvement of soil health and fertility. Distribution is aimed at developing countries in Latin America and Africa, where agriculture is the way of life of many. Widespread use will reduce the amount of chemical fertilizers applied globally, reducing their environmental impacts, including the loss of soil biodiversity, and slowing the need for expansion of the agricultural frontier due to land degradation.
Language(s)
ENGLISH, SPANISH, FRENCH
Water
Soil Activator increases the ability of soils to retain water and improves soil aggregate stability, reducing irrigation, runoff and leeching from chemical fertilizers, thus lowering water consumption and pollution resulting from conventional agricultural operations. By fixing atmospheric nitrogen and solubilizing phosphorus, it reduces pollution in aquatic ecosystems, which causes water acidification, eutrophication, groundwater contamination, and harm to biodiversity.
Food Security/Nutrition
Soil fertility depletion will lead to increasing food insecurity for many. SDG 2.4 calls for sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices that help increase productivity and production, maintain ecosystems, strengthen climate change adaptation capacity, extreme weather, drought and that progressively improve land and soil quality. Soil Activator has benefits in all of these regards, and also makes minerals available to plants, increasing their nutritional value.
Economic/Sustainable Development
500 characters Soil Activator can produce higher economic returns from higher and better quality agricultural yields, paired with reduced fertilizer costs. This provides a basis for sustainable economic development where farming provides livelihoods for large parts of the population. It is also approved for organic production under European, US and Canadian standards with Ecocert, IMO-Control, and Control Union. Organic products command higher market prices and support sustainable developme max.
Climate
The Haber process, used to produce 450m tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer per year, consumes three to five percent of the world's natural gas production. Agricultural fertilization has led to a rise in N2O in the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas that is the 3rd largest contributor to global warming. Soil Activator fixes atmospheric nitrogen, eliminating the need for nitrogen fertilizers, and we are carrying out research on its potential role in sequestering carbon in soils.
Sustainability
Our solution is built on market-based relationships, and as such it has not required external subsidies or grant funding to operate. Farmers generate higher yields with a positive return on investment. Dealers and distributors generate revenue through building new working relationships with customers. Earth Alive generates revenue through the sale of Soil Activator after product adoption. No grant money or government subsidies have been received to date.
Return on investment
Putting aside the capital intensive research and development stage, implementing our trial programme for Soil Activator costs approximately $5000 per country. Based on our results in five countries in 2016, we found that up to 80% of the farmers that run trials on Soil Activator have adopted it for ongoing use. Countries that installed trials in 2016 are now ordering 40 ft. shipping containers full of Soil Activator to meet the demand from farmers who have trialed the technology. Thus far, results are very favourable compared to the investment, and we expect this to continue as we expand to 30 countries in Africa and the Americas by 2019.
Entrant Image
Entrant Banner Image
Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
Earth Alive has registered Soil Activator in 11 countries in the Americas, and we are scaling up its use in these jurisdictions, while aiming to replicate this in 20 more countries in Africa and the Americas by 2019. In order to meet this timeline, we are raising capital to expand our staff in countries where we have and intend to register the product. Key stakeholders/partners in the process are national country governments, ministries, distributors, commercial producers, cooperatives, civil society, and smallholder farmers. Awareness raising will be important to have Soil Activator adopted more broadly in agriculture and land restoration, as well as technical capacity building on effectively using Soil Activator, and the availability of finance for agricultural producers (including microfinance). In less developed markets, civil society and cooperatives will be important partners in covering the ‘last mile’ to smallholders that are not well served by existing distribution networks.