NEWELL COUNTY, Alta. — At a glance, the Eckert family farm is indistinguishable from the other barley, corn or sunflower operations that line this narrow stretch of highway east of Calgary. 

But the 2,800-acre plot, run by brothers Justin and Scott Eckert, is a testing ground for a new genre of low-carbon technology that challenges deep-held convictions within Canada’s $150-billion agriculture sector. 

Affixed to the brothers’ five tractors and two natural gas-powered irrigation systems are white tanks that capture exhaust fumes. The fumes are mixed with a microbial solution, cooled and converted into a carbon-based vapour that is then sprayed onto the crop, typically during seeding. Built by Alberta-based startup Bio-Agtive Emissions Farming, the closed-loop system is designed to eliminate the need for chemical-based fertilizers, a mainstay for commercial-scale farmers that boosts crop growth by injecting nitrogen into their roots. 

The Eckerts say they haven’t used synthetic fertilizer since adopting the technology—known broadly as biological or low-carbon fertilizers—four years ago. Yields are higher, the pair says, while their production costs have fallen from between $100 to $150 per acre four years ago down to around $50 today. The new system has won the approval of their sole barley buyer, Chicago-based brewing giant Molson Coors. 

“Our return on investment is way higher,” Justin Eckert told The Logic during a tour of the farm in late August. 

The Eckerts’ adoption of the Bio-Agtive system comes as some farmers shift away from synthetic fertilizers, largely in response to rising costs, which were driven up further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Synthetic fertilizers—typically derived from fossil fuels like natural gas—also take a steep environmental toll: they’re responsible for a large portion of the agricultural industry’s carbon emissions. 

That has prompted numerous companies to offer non-synthetic alternatives, like Montreal’s Concentric or Vancouver-based Terramera, backed by Arctern Ventures. California’s Pivot Bio, which counts Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other major funds among its investors, is a prominent U.S. non-synthetic fertilizer provider. 

Fertilizer and other input costs are so high that an entire software industry has emerged around more efficient distribution, with companies from Vancouver startup Semios to machinery giant John Deere providing all-in-one platforms that leverage reams of data and artificial intelligence. 

Bio-Agtive, for its part, said it captures all of the exhaust otherwise emitted from the tractors, seeders, combines and other machinery its technology is mounted on. That reduces airborne CO2 emissions, it said, while almost entirely eliminating emissions of nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas that is released during the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers. 

Bio Agtive is currently working with researchers at the University of Calgary and Olds College to measure the environmental performance of its technology.

Gary Lewis, the company’s founder, said the agriculture sector is undergoing “a paradigm shift of our thinking” due to both the financial and environmental costs of chemical-based synthetics.

Still, synthetic fertilizers have become deeply ingrained in the modern agriculture sector, and are unlikely to go away. They played a vital role in turning the agriculture industry into an industrial juggernaut, University of Manitoba professor Warren Blunt said. That has carried over to today, as farmers depend on fertilizers and other additives to grow the staggering amounts of food needed to meet global demands. 

“It’s afforded our modern society a wealth of food security, but it’s also extremely hard on the environment,” Blunt said. 

Many farmers who rely on chemical fertilizers need convincing that a shift to biological alternatives is viable. 

Though unfamiliar with the Bio-Agtive system, Dean Roberts, who operates a wheat, canola and lentil farm in west central Saskatchewan, noted technology companies have been pitching farmers on new practices, some of them biologically based, as long as there have been farms—with mixed results.

“My question would be, how well is it working, and is it backed up by science,” Roberts said. 

The Eckert brothers said it cost around $250,000 to install the Bio-Agtive equipment on their machinery. It also required them to alter some processes on a farm that has been in the Eckert family since 1934. 

But those changes have also lowered fuel costs and other inputs, they say. 

In previous farming seasons, the Eckerts and their staff would spread one initial pass of Roundup on the unseeded soil, then phosphorous and synthetic fertilizer during seeding, followed by a herbicide pass later in the season and, finally, an insecticide once the crops had grown a bit. Now, their process involves a simultaneous seeding and spreading of the carbon vapour generated from the Bio-Agtive system, a pass of herbicide and, later in the season, another carbon-vapour pass. 

So far, the Eckerts’ yields have satisfied requirements laid out by Molson Coors, which buys 100 per cent of the Eckert’s annual barley yield. Cody Shick, a regional manager in Molson’s barley program who consults with the Eckerts, said the company secures barley from a selection of farms across the U.S. and Canada, including 24 in southern Alberta. 

The brewer inspects all of that barley to ensure it meets a number of standards, chief among them that the grains contain a certain level of protein. 

“I would say we have fairly strict standards and specifications for our malt barley,” Shick said. 

Established synthetic fertilizer providers have in recent years started to offer their own biological products, referred to as “bug in a jug” by the Eckerts and other farmers for the microbial critters they contain. But those providers often recommend farmers apply them alongside traditional nitrogen fertilizer, an approach that Justin Eckert said would only increase costs further. 

The pair said they’ve discussed their approach with other farmers and company representatives in the area, but found many remain hesitant, unconvinced, or downright bewildered by it. 

In one of the world’s oldest industries, observed Scott Eckert, habits die hard.

“One of the hardest people to change is a farmer.”