Partner Profile: Pivot Bio

FFAR was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Jane Franch, Senior Director of Climate Impact at Pivot Bio, to discuss their vision and collaborative approach to the fertilizer industry.

In 2023, Pivot Bio became a member of the Efficient Fertilizer Consortium (EFC). Joining the collaboration enables them to fund research that will help farmers use novel and current fertilizers more efficiently, improve soil fertility, decrease input costs, reduce nitrous oxide emissions and improve global food security.

Through the EFC, Pivot Bio hopes to generate data on the environmental impact of biologicals, “We continue to think about the broader range of impacts of using fertilizer and also when it’s used to replace synthetic fertilizers.” Franch continued by noting this requires a collaborative approach, not only because it’s resource intensive, but also because there is a lot of variability required in field trials needed to perform the work.

“The EFC is well positioned to provide broad scientific expertise that we could not simply accomplish by ourselves. We decided to collaborate with FFAR due to their proven track record of putting together innovative and leading-edge collaborations. It’s a great way to participate in exploratory research that can then feed directly back into the policy making that is beneficial for everybody.”

The EFC was appealing to Pivot Bio, as they hoped to be a part of a public group and gain the opportunity to interact with other private sector companies working in this space, “Joining the EFC was a great way for us to continue thinking about how to develop enhanced efficiency fertilizers that are impactful for reducing nitrogen loss.”

FFAR and Pivot Bio are collaborating with one another, as well as other industry groups and international governments to spread this information to farmers and collectively address challenges related to nitrogen pollution.

“The EFC felt like a dynamic and rich consortium to participate in that has a balanced perspective and involves a variety of different stakeholders. It is a critical partnership that is filling a gap right now. There is a need to collaborate on the critical issue of fertilizers; they are so important to food security and to farmer profitability. We need to understand very quickly what the best pathways are to reducing fertilizer impacts while still ensuring productivity. EFC is a collaboration which takes a multistakeholder approach from involving startups, like Pivot Bio, to larger companies, and anybody with a voice in the room could benefit from being a part of this conversation.”

Jane Franch is the Senior Director of Climate Impact at Pivot Bio, where she leads the development of the company’s monitoring and reporting program to accelerate the company’s climate impact and effectively communicate its journey to investors, policy makers, customers and employees. In this role, Jane assessed the companies Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for the first time, spearheaded an ISO compliant product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), developed and launched the company’s inaugural impact report and created new processes for accurately modeling the amount of synthetic fertilizer that is being replaced by Pivot Bio’s customers with the company’s non-polluting alternative and the climate & environmental impacts of this replacement. Jane holds an BA, English Literature, from UC Berkeley and an MS, Environmental and Forest Sciences, from the University of Washington

Pivot Bio is a leading sustainable agriculture company delivering to farmers patented crop nutrition technologies that harness the power of nature to reliably and productively grow the food the world needs in the face of increasing volatility. Currently available in North America and soon in Brazil, the company’s products are a breakthrough innovation. They are among the industry’s most promising climate solutions because they deliver nitrogen to plants without the negative impacts of synthetic fertilizer. Pivot Bio’s nitrogen is weatherproof, safer to handle and delivers a higher ROI for growers. The company’s microbial nitrogen converts atmospheric nitrogen into a form that plants can use. Pivot Bio’s products are now used by farmers on over 5 million acres – an unprecedented rate of adoption for new crop nutrition technology.