The Seward County Commissioners approved a conditional use permit for the company Geocharged on Sept. 20 by a 4-1 vote.
Geocharged, created by Angela Fulton, Lisa Kouma and Darek Kouma, is a biochar-loaded fertilizer loaded with nutrient-rich chicken manure compost that provides a higher yield of fresh produce and crops and is a natural alternative to chemical fertilizers. Geocharged is also an environmentally safe product.
One of Geocharged’s main ingredients is made by the process of pyrolysis, or the burning of biomass with limited or no oxygen.
Lisa Kouma and Fulton both worked as lab technicians in Lincoln before starting Geocharged and got the idea when they learned about the lack of nutrition in food.
“I was talking to a friend that was heavily involved in nutrition, and she opened my mind to the idea that our food no longer carries the same nutritional value that it used to,” Kouma said. “That was really disturbing to me. Why does our food not have the proper nutrition that it should have?”
When they decided to give Geocharged a go, they reached out to a farmer who owned the land around them to see if he would be willing to sell the land. Once they found a bank that would work with them, the Koumas and Fulton got to work.
The first step in the process for them was to get barns and solar panels up and test the product.
“There have been a lot of trials getting this far,” Fulton said. “We knew we wanted to combine both the biochar and the chicken litter because of the benefits it would have.”
The testing consisted of figuring out ratios of the mix and seeing what plant thrives with certain ratios. They also had to construct multiple prototypes to make a product that could produce biochar.
“You have to be able to burn the feedstock with little to no oxygen,” Fulton said. “All of our prototypes came from scrap metal from our grandpa’s farm.”
During the testing, Kouma and Fulton noticed something fascinating about the produce yield.
“We had a big increase in yield compared to competitors for our test runs,” Kouma said. “It would grow up to 3.5 times more produce. It was amazing.”
Once they started selling the product, Kouma said they started to hear positive feedback.
“Friends, neighbors and even their friends said they were buying it,” she said. “2022 came around and we got going on Amazon.”
Geocharged has now sold to over 40 states.
Now that business is picking up for Geocharged, they are looking to move locations for more space. The location that Geocharged got the conditional use permit for was along Highway 34 approximately two and a half miles northwest of Tamora. The land they will be on is 80 acres, but will only be built on 20 acres.
One of the big reasons they liked the location had to do with truck traffic.
“It made us happy knowing that a lot of our truck traffic would only have to go around two and a half miles on Highway 34,” Kouma said. “It was also the farthest away from neighbors that we could get so they don’t have to see it every day. We wanted to be as mindful as possible about where we put the facility.”
Another reason why Kouma and Fulton wanted to move from their current location in Staplehurst is a desire to produce on a larger scale.
“We have this big vision and big dreams about getting into bigger stores and touching more lives,” Kouma said. “We’ve done a lot of networking with other people and businesses across the U.S. that have really helped put this whole project together.”
They also mentioned being on a larger scale would require them to have more capacity than they do currently.
Geocharge expanding to a new location would also benefit Seward County. One of the reasons is bringing jobs.
“We’ve worked in a corporate setting and situation, so we know how it feels to be treated as just another number,” Fulton said. “We’re a family-owned business, so we want to treat our employees like family.”
Kouma also said bringing in more families with jobs can bring more students to Seward County schools and help more businesses.
“It’s going to have an impact,” she said. “An impact on bringing in more resources and bring in fresh money to the county, which is cool.”
Overall, the Koumas and Fulton wanted to make a product that was environmentally friendly and that could support ag and people on a large scale.
