At Kinnard Farms in Casco, Wis, manure management processes will look quite different by the summer of 2026. Sedron, a leader in upcycling waste into valuable products, is installing its Varcor® System. The innovative technology is designed to separate valuable nutrients from manure by removing water and extracting nutrients to create high-concentration, low-volume fertilizer products. Kinnard Farms is one of only three dairies worldwide to implement this technology, alongside two others located in Indiana. The system is expected to be fully operational by the end of summer 2026.
The Valcor technology has the potential to address real challenges for dairy farmers in terms of manure management, particularly for those in Wisconsin, where cropping land is often segmented into smaller fields. This results in higher costs and handling burdens on the farm, because it requires trucking in large volumes and adhering to appropriate application regulations for property line and well setbacks.
“Farmers can use the nutrients, the same nutrients in manure (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), but they’re really concentrated and now they’re separated out in much smaller volumes,” Reid said. “We can pelletize or granulize the dry fertilizer product so it can be applied using existing application equipment, and farmers can apply it when planting, side dress it, top dress it or knife it in. It opens up a lot of opportunities.”
It also has the potential to significantly reduce a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating the use of lagoons for long-term storage and also the land application of manure, which often requires conventional tillage practices due to the high percentage of water in manure.
“Lee Kinnard (owner of Kinnard Farms) has been a leader in technology advancement within dairy and agriculture, and his facility is probably one of the most advanced dairy farms in the country,” Reid said. “His legacy is really how do we continue to be stewards of the land and put it in a better position than when we found it. He carries that through in manure application, soil health, regenerative farming practices, all the way through to his milking herds.”
Kinnard expects to see several significant benefits once the Valcor technology is operational.
“Reducing our trucking traffic is going to be a noticeable difference right off the bat,” Kinnard said. “Our manure is 97% water and 3% solids. It doesn’t make sense to have 100 trucks going down the road with only three loads of nutrients. By taking out the water, you’re no longer hauling water; you’re hauling nutrients.”
Another advantage is that the manure is processed in real time, rather than being stored in a lagoon, allowing all the valuable nitrogen in the manure to be captured.
“When you put manure in a lagoon, some of the nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere through volatilization. When we’re no longer storing manure and instead converting it to fertilizer right away, we’re capturing all of that nitrogen,” Kinnard said. “On top of that, the process separates out the nitrogen, making it much easier for us to balance the nutrients in our soils to the precise needs of the crops we are growing.”
Sedron is positively transforming the approach to manure management and conservation.
“Sedron is very innovative; they truly invented a better mousetrap,” Kinnard said.