How Pivot Bio is helping farmers generate more income while reducing emissions

Pivot Bio is No. 47 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2024. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.

Pivot Bio’s products help replace fossil-fuel-based fertilizer with microbes that deliver nitrogen from the air directly to plant roots. The microbe genetically edited versions of organisms that naturally coexist with crops—produce nitrogen when the plants need it.

Pivot’s first product, applied directly to fields during planting, replaces up to 25% of standard nitrogen fertilizer; in 2023, the company released a coating for corn, oats, and other seeds so farmers can plant with no additional step.

“You’re planting the same seed,” says Pivot Bio CEO Chris Abbott. “It now fixes nitrogen.”

The products are being used on more than 5 million acres of cornfields, and last year Pivot doubled its manufacturing and distribution capacity, taking in more than $100 million in revenue.

It also designed a platform that helps participating farmers connect with food companies willing to pay a premium for production methods that cut emissions in their supply chains.

“It’s additional income that the grower didn’t have before,” Abbott says.

Explore the full 2024 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 606 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, and more.

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