A researcher from Saskatoon is currently in Denmark studying how recycled fertilizers could support more sustainable farming practices in Europe, and maybe one day, Canada.

Aimée Schryer is currently at the University of Copenhagen, looking into reducing the amount of fertilizer required to be imported into the country by integrating the use of recycled waste.

She explains that “There’s a lot of geopolitical uncertainty and risk in a lot of places that mine phosphorus, and there is also a real big push of sustainability in the EU to try and create something called a circular economy, which is basically using what we already have to create new fertilizers and reduce how much that they’re shipping in.”

Schryer says many of the waste products societies produce contain phosphorus and can be used as fertilizer.

“Think of your sewage sludge, your manure, biproducts of industry, so meats and bone meal…and there are some pretty niche ones. There’s a group at my work looking at the husks of bugs,” she explains.

She says when testing which type of waste performed best, using the Canadian Light Source on the USask campus, it wasn’t a one-size-fits- all answer, as most things aren’t. Schryer explains that different types of waste bring different strengths to the table.

“We found that the sewage sludge was very good at letting phosphorus move and being more, what we would say, plant available over a longer period of time than the other recycles fertilizers.”

Meanwhile, the pig biproducts helped promote microbes such as bacteria and fungus in the soil, which helped the phosphorus move even further away from its origin point, deeper into the soil.

Schryer adds that this research laid the foundation for a larger project.

“Outside of Copenhagen, there is a research facility in which there’s a long-term study using quite a few of these fertilizers…Some of my colleagues also have been using similar fertilizer out in the field, and we’re going to see in a couple of years how well these recycled fertilizers would work in comparison to a commercial fertilizer.”

The researcher adds that using these types of waste on a large scale is far more applicable in Europe than Canada.

Schryer explains that the EU is more densely populated, producing more waste, which can cover a higher number of their smaller fields. “In a Canadian context, we would be more concerned with prices and how to move enough of it. If you think of Saskatchewan, which has a lot of cropland but not a lot of people, we would have to be a lot smarter as to where we’re moving them and how expensive it would be.”

However, for countries that find it sustainable, Schryer says those farmers can expect to cut costs on commercial fertilizers.