Synthetic fertilizer is a modern wonder, helping to feed billions of people, but it’s not without its costs. Fertilizer runoff from farm fields has led to dead zones in oceans around the world, where low oxygen levels have starved normally teeming coastal waters of life.
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NetZeroNitrogen has developed a suite of bacterial strains that is applied directly to the seed and allows the plant to get nitrogen from the atmosphere instead of chemicals.
“This is a precision sniper approach,” Justin Hughes, co-founder and CEO of NetZeroNitrogen, told TechCrunch. “In contrast to fertilizer, where you spread it all over the field and effectively hope some hits the target, a kind of shotgun approach.”
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The goal, Hughes added, is to sell NetZeroNitrogen’s bacteria to farmers for at least $50 per hectare less than they spend on synthetic fertilizers. In regions like Southeast Asia, that could mean a 30% to 40% discount, he said.
