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ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
“ A lot of our waste here, and a lot of almost any city’ s waste, is actually food,” Gregory explains.“ So they said‘ let ' s take food waste, convert it to fertilizer and put it back into the system’.”
A Zimin Institute project was built around converting post-consumer food waste into a viable, cost-effective liquid fertilizer – a task complicated by food waste’ s typically low nitrogen content. The project was led by ASU Assistant Professor Yujin Park and conducted at her Indoor Farming Lab at ASU’ s Polytechnic campus.“ Most food waste isn’ t by itself a viable fertilizer, so her project focused on a novel processing method to inexpensively convert the food waste into a usable liquid fertilizer that would be viable and effective,” Gregory says.
The result was a breakthrough – Yujin and her team successfully developed and demonstrated this technology in her lab and then transitioned it to Homer Farms, who has since brought the product to market. In recognition of her work, Yujin was awarded the prestigious New Innovator Award from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research in 2024.
The impact didn’ t stop at technology. The Zimin Institute’ s initial support was catalytic, positioning Homer Farms secure major funding from the City of Phoenix to create a 10,000 square-foot demonstration and pilot production site.“ I don’ t want the Zimin Institute to take credit for the Phoenix funding, but there’ s no doubt that our success with our project helped them demonstrate
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