Japanese agricultural technology company Towing Ltd. has taken space in the Lab@AgStart in Woodland to test its soil improvement technology on crops in the U.S.
Using its technology, Towing can convert biochar, a substance produced from combusted organic matter, into productive soil and soil amendment in about a month, rather than the three to five years it would otherwise take to convert.
The company adds microorganisms through several steps to biochar in a process similar to the fermentation of sake, or rice wine, said Shogo Okishio, head of sales with Towing.
The company is based in Nagoya, Japan. It took lab space in Woodland to make test products for farmer trials in the U.S.
“It is difficult to import microbes. We can re-create them there,” Okishio said.
Founded in 2020, Towing has 30 full-time and 30 part-time employees, mostly in Japan.
The company is a spinoff from Nagoya University. The founder was working on the problem of growing food in space and recycling waste. In that research, he discovered the potential to use the technology on earth to combat climate change by sequestering carbon in soil.
Towing’s product would allow for mass carbon sequestration on agricultural land, and product users may be eligible for carbon credits, he said.
Biochar is organic material that has been partially combusted in a low-oxygen environment. The result is a carbon-dense ash-like product. It’s also pretty much sterile, so it doesn’t have any pests or pathogens. It can be made from timber, rice husks, corn stalks and manure.
Towing raised $7 million in 2023, and then this year raised $8.4 million in funding from the Small Business Innovation Research arm of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The company has gone through the Google accelerator and the University of California Berkeley’s SkyDeck venture accelerator, Okishio said
Towing adds microorganisms to the biochar, and they live in the porous sections of charcoal. They are then capable of decomposing organic fertilizers from soil and making them bioavailable for plants.
The company uses patented technologies and processes to attach microorganisms to the biochar to make a soil amendment that acts in conjunction with soil and fertilizer. It reduces the need for adding more synthetic fertilizer
Towing’s product, called Soratan, is a soil amendment similar to compost, which increases soil productivity resulting in higher yields, Okishio said.
He said Towing found the Lab@AgStart by looking for lab space in California on the internet.
It is the third foreign company that chose the Lab@AgStart as a location for their U.S. laboratory beachheads, said John Selep, president of the AgTech Innovation Alliance, the nonprofit sponsor of the Lab@AgStart business incubator. “That was never our intent, but it has been working.”
The other two companies are nutritional biotechnology company TurtleTree, which is based in Singapore, and agricultural technology company Botanical Solution Inc., which was founded in Santiago, Chile, but calls Davis headquarters and uses labs in Woodland and Davis.
The Lab@AgStart opened in 2021 in 5,000 square feet of space in an office complex at 1100 Main St. in downtown Woodland. In January 2022, it opened an 8,000-square-foot expansion.
