Completing The Farming Circle with Biosolids

“For farmers that may not know about us yet, we are coming,” says Jacob Collins, a Fairfield, California-based certified crop advisor for Lystek International. He’s standing next to a Fendt 1038 tractor that’s about to pull a rig loaded with LysteGro, a Class A biosolid fertilizer. Collins wants to tell farmers that it’s a product that can reduce their dependence on chemical fertilizer, while using a valuable resource that’s going to waste.

But there’s this one thing folks will have to get past: LysteGro has among its content “municipal biosolids,” which translates at least in part to “human waste.” And while the “thermal hydrolysis process” that Lystek employs will create a pathogen-free product, Collins acknowledges there’s a bit of a stigma.

Even still, he’s finding farmers who are believers. One of those is Neil Anderson, from nearby Birds Landing, California. He’s a fifth generation farmer in the region (“sixth generation on my mom’s side,” he notes), and is both a LysteGro customer and custom applicator since 2017.

“All we had ever put in the soil since I’d been alive was anhydrous,” says Anderson. He says LysteGro “has done amazing things for the soil, bringing it back to life, producing really good crops, making happier California cows, and just done great things for us.”

Anderson and his family have farmed up to 10,000 acres in the region, and though they face encroaching development pressures, they still produce wheat, barley, safflower and hay on the often steep ground of California’s Montezuma Hills. They also run cattle and sheep.

Neil Anderson

It’s an operation that fits the conditions for using a product like LysteGro, says Collins. “We mostly put it on fiber and fodder crops: cotton, wheat, sorghum, anything that’s really harvested above the ground,” he says.

Anderson says they also use it on grazing ground. “I’ve raised cows in two fields next to each other,” he says. “One field having LysteGro applied, one field not having LysteGro applied. We had the average steers that came out of there that weighed 150 pounds more in the LysteGro field than the other field. I’ll have gates open from a field that has the fertilizer to the field that doesn’t, and they don’t leave the field that has the fertilizer,” he adds.

Collins describes Lystek as a resource recovery center. “We take in organics that would otherwise go to landfills, we divert them, we process them through a thermal hydrolysis process,” he says. Besides the bio-waste, LysteGro also contains food waste, so he says the product helps “complete a circle” of use and re-use. “From a farmer’s perspective, they’re creating a food,” says Collins. “That food gets consumed again by people. It gets digested, goes back to the wastewater treatment plant. It’ll get processed through some of their digesters. It’ll come back to us. We’ll create a fertilizer, take it back out to the farm,” he describes. Collins also notes that the beneficial nutrients don’t break down as quickly as synthetic fertilizers, adding a residual effect in the soil from season to season.

Collins says the ceiling is high for growth and uptake of the product, and that the company remains excited about the public-private partnerships that help divert biowaste from landfills. “We are only in a couple of states and Canada and a couple other places in Europe, but our technology is coming slowly out through the rest of the states and hopefully through other provinces,” he says. The other crucial partnership for Lystek is with farmers like Anderson, who apply the product. “Neil is a very important person to us,” says Collins of Anderson. “We’re really dependent on him and his equipment working for us.”

“Fertilizer prices, fuel prices, commodity prices… custom work was able to make up for that and keep my farm afloat,” says Anderson. Even so, that custom work can put high demands on a farmer’s time. “They tell me where to go, and when to go,” Anderson says. “We have to be ready when they are.”

The demands that custom work put on equipment are very high, says Anderson.

LysteGro is injected into the ground with a 15-foot bar, lined with cutter wheels and pipes at 24-inch spacing. The 6,500 gallon tank empties quickly; the injection rate is 4,000 gallons an acre. “(A truck) will show up out every 15 minutes, we’ll unload it in about 3 or 4 minutes, apply for 5 to 7 minutes, and then pull around for the next truck,” he says.

Anderson remembers being surprised by that, but the accelerated application rate emphasizes the importance of dependable equipment, since trucks from the Lystek facility transport the product to the field and line up waiting to refill the tank.

“The demands that custom work put on equipment are very high,” says Anderson. “You have to make sure the equipment’s running, keep your clients happy. You don’t want it to break down and not be there on time and have everybody behind schedule because of you. So, a reliable tractor … is very important to have.”

The time and travel have to pencil out as well, and that’s one reason Anderson trusts Fendt tractors for the custom work. Besides reliability, Anderson relies on Fendt efficiency. “I have every color tractor: Case, John Deere, New Holland, Kubota, Versatile,” he says. “What I’ve noticed with the Fendt is the fuel economy. As long as you’re not foot to the floor, you’re getting a lot better fuel economy than other tractors.”

Anderson’s first Fendt model was a 1042. “I put 9,000 hours on it, mostly with the fertilizer rig behind it,” says Anderson. The family has since added more Fendt to the fleet. “I currently have three 1038s, a 1046. My dad has a 1152, and my father-in-law just bought a 738.”

Anderson notes the efficiency he has experienced using Fendt in their own operation. “For example, we hooked our 1042 up to a big baler,” he says, “and according to the computer, we only used four and a half gallons per hour, for the whole season, on average. And I think our other tractors are using eight to 12 gallons per hour.”

Reliable fuel savings are helpful to his business; so is a reliable cost of operation, thanks to the Fendt Gold Star warranty. “I know what my cost is going to be per hour,” he says. “I don’t have to spend anything extra on maintenance or on repairs because it’s covered for that first 3,000 hours.

“It helps with budgeting because I know what I’m paying per hour and I can pass that along to the customers without worrying about having to spend more money than I’ve quoted them,” he adds.