Growing the Future

GTF Podcast: Where Does 46% of Your Nitrogen Actually Go?

Episode Summary

In this episode you will learn about balance in the soil and in your own life as Jeff recounts his challenges as he founded a brand new company, full of scientific innovation similar to the advances that saved his life from a terminal diagnosis!

Episode Notes

Jeff Ivan grew up on a family farm south of Glenside, Saskatchewan. He left it because there was no room for him and spent the next 35 years becoming one of the most widely traveled fertilizer specialists in the world -- 80 countries, 25 countries in a single year at his peak, and a career that took him from cleaning grain elevator dustbins in Glenside to advising governments and companies across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The United Nations puts nitrogen loss at 46% of what is applied. Up to 90% of phosphate goes unused in the year of application. Jeff's position is that the answer is not to cut back on fertilizer. The answer is to make it work.

Soilgenic Technologies was built on that argument -- 60 patents on nitrogen stabilization and phosphate enhancement technology. Jeff was diagnosed with stage 3B colon cancer within a month of founding it.

What's Inside

• Why 46% of applied nitrogen and up to 90% of phosphate never reaches the crop -- and what that costs per acre
• The Haber-Bosch process: what it is, why half the world depends on it, and why calls to cut synthetic nitrogen concern Jeff deeply
• The elements beyond NPK most Prairie fertility programs underweight: sulfur, calcium, magnesium, zinc
• How Soilgenic's stabilization technology keeps nitrogen in the stable ammonium form longer -- reducing nitrous oxide emissions that are 265 times more potent than CO2
• What Jeff learned about balance -- in soil, and in himself -- after the diagnosis

Related Episodes

Your Soil Type Is Costing You Yield -- Greg Patterson on the fertility variable the handbooks skip

Before You Spray: 3 Things That Could Cost You Money This Season (May 2026) -- timing, inputs, and what the field actually needs

Connect with Jeff: 

Website: https://www.soilgenic.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soilgenic/ 

Twitter: https://x.com/Soilgenic

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