Farmer Kent Espen Skaar on Sunnmøre has 700 mål of land to fertilize. Most farmers mix artificial fertilizer into livestock manure, but Skaar uses a different ingredient. He first tested urea from the fish oil industry five years ago and experienced it as a great success. The grass yield grows just as well as before with the fish oil urea, he said.
Fertilizer prices are rising worldwide due to unrest in the Middle East and high fuel costs. For Skaar personally, this concern is somewhat less, although the urea price will also rise. The company Epax on Ellingsøya in Ålesund produces Omega-3 concentrate and uses urea as an auxiliary substance. If the farmer could not reuse the substance, it would have been delivered to a waste reception facility. The price of the reused fertilizer is a quarter of buying it new, and it also contains 3-4 percent purified fish fat. According to Bjørn Refsum, factory manager at Epax, the available reused urea can only cover the need in Møre og Romsdal.
You can be unlucky with unfavorable weather conditions when you spread. Then the effect decreases.
Using used urea can be a way for the farmer to save money, but there is also a risk compared to using artificial fertilizer. According to NRK Møre og Romsdal, advisor Jon Geirmund Lied described that unfavorable weather conditions when spreading can reduce the effect. Nitrogen can evaporate into the air, and strong wind, sunshine, and heat can make fertilization less predictable. Skaar brings a motorcycle in the tractor to easily drive across the field and check the fertilizer hoses. For every 10 loads of fertilizer he spreads, Skaar takes samples to ensure the mixture is correct. He believes more farmers will do the same as him in the future.