Minnesota company is tackling nitrogen pollution with ag science in volatile fertilizer market

When the U.S. started bombing Iran in February and trade routes bottlenecked, Minnesota farmer Les Anderson watched synthetic nitrogen fertilizer prices skyrocket. 

Making the product requires natural gas, a fuel source shipped through the currently blockaded Strait of Hormuz and further threatened by Iranian counterattacks on a major Qatari liquefied natural gas facility. 

So when planting season arrived in the spring, the cost of the fertilizer had nearly doubled from the previous year. 

“You know how electric cars have range anxiety? We farmers have nitrogen anxiety,” Anderson said. 

That’s when Anderson, who previously served as president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, leaned on a product he had spent recent years experimenting with at his Cannon Falls corn and soybean farm — one that departs from traditional sources of fertilizer. 

The alternative is made by Pivot Bio, a company selling farmers a self-sustaining, non-synthetic, bacterial source of nitrogen, with the aim to lower the nitrogen levels that are the source of significant water pollution in farm states.

The company moved to Minnesota from California in early 2026. 

Since beginning commercial sales around six years ago, the fertilizer has been used on millions of acres by thousands of farmers, including corn, wheat, cotton and sorghum growers, according to the company. But there’s massive room to grow: The American fertilizer market alone is more than $40 billion at wholesale, according to the International Fertilizer Association. 

Pivot Bio has seen a major increase in sales since international trade began to fragment last winter, according to CEO Chris Abbott, though the company declined to provide any data. 

How does it work?

Abbott characterized the product as bacteria that act like “little nitrogen factories.” 

“Pivot Bio pinpoint a microbe natural to a crop’s specific microbiome with the genetic code for nitrogen fixation, reads a company explainer. “We evaluate billions of ways to edit the microbe’s own genetic code to enable its nitrogen fixation powers.” 

It’s typically applied as a coating on the seed that sticks to the plant as it grows, continuously fertilizing it throughout the process — all without leaching the nitrogen into the ground. 

The new tech helps to shield the environment from the toxic runoff that seeps into the ground when nitrogen is applied to crops in excess. 

And, having a relatively fixed amount of fertilizer throughout the growing season helps to soothe the “nitrogen anxiety” Anderson described. 

“You simply can’t make it through the season if you don’t have enough (nitrogen),” he said.  

In his own trials, Anderson said the product was particularly useful in periods of higher rainfall, when traditional, synthetic nitrogen fertilizers otherwise wash away. It’s even more useful when the price of those fertilizers doubles, he added. 

To reach the same yield, Pivot Bio users are on average applying half the amount of nitrogen compared with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Anderson confirmed those results have played out on his own farm. 

‘Don’t bury your head in the sand’

For more than a century, farmers like Anderson have been using synthetic nitrogen fertilizers to allow them to quickly produce higher yields. The material has been used to feed an exploding world population through global hardships, like drought and war.

But synthetics have also been proven to cause severely degraded soil health and widespread water pollution. 

Minnesota for years has seen rising nitrate levels in drinking water sources, which can cause birth defects, blue baby syndrome and cancer. Toxic algal blooms are also becoming more common. Both trends are largely tied to the use of synthetic nitrate fertilizer in large-scale farming operations.

Water pollution has become so severe in Iowa that it’s changing the state’s politics and has become a bipartisan issue. 

Employing incentives to nurture sustainable fertilizing practices has been a growing priority for Minnesota, Department of Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen told Abbott during a meeting at the Capitol last month. 

Minnesota has several programs in place to assist farmers in doing so, including the Biofertilizer Innovation and Efficiency Pilot Program, climate friendly agricultural practices incentive payments and the Green Fertilizer Program. 

Still, of the many farmers Anderson has gotten to know over the years, most are apprehensive about new technology, he said. 

Many have been “burned” by ag tech companies claiming to have the “newest and greatest” products, he said. Pivot Bio, which is currently valued at roughly $2 billion, appears to be overcoming that skepticism thus far, with rising fertilizer prices likely to spur further experimentation by farmers. 

He encouraged farmers to optimize their nitrogen use, especially before they are forced to do so by state regulations, leaving one final message for his colleagues: “Don’t bury your head in the sand.”