As people pass by GreenFlow’s booth at Ag In Motion 2025, a lot of heads turn, smiles appear and some even stop and take a picture of the company’s signs.
Those signs boldly declare “Squid Juice — From Sea to Soil.”
The Ontario-based firm is moving into the western Canadian market with a premium fertilizer made from the byproducts of processing squid into calamari rings.
Greenflow bills the product as a sustainably sourced all purpose liquid fertilizer.
Sammy Prantera, the company’s director of marketing, says it might seem like a strange idea and generate a bit of amusement, but it’s based in science from the public sector.
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“A 2016 paper from the USDA identified it as a possible sustainable source of fertilizer,” Prantera said.
“Over half of the squid is considered waste when they’re making calamari. They were putting that back into the ocean, and they wanted to find something better to do with it.”
The idea of adding an aquatic product to crops isn’t entirely novel. In pre-contact days, Indigenous farmers planted small fish with corn to nourish the plants. In the 17th century, European farmers used fish waste on their fields.
However, it’s the explosion in popularity of calamari as a restaurant appetizer that’s led to a ready supply of raw material for the fertilizer maker.
The resulting fertilizer is a 2-2-2 NPK product, which also includes micronutrients such as copper, calcium and magnesium.
Prantera says he’s also excited about the naturally -occurring chitin — squid are the only non-shellfish aquatic being that contain this compound. It’s a common additive in other natural fertilizers, and some studies show it promotes plant growth and defense.
The company is four and a half years old, and has been active in Ontario, Atlantic Canada and the United States. This is its first foray into Western Canada.
“We’re supporting the organic and regenerative agriculture producers, of course,” Prantera said.
“But we’re also starting to bridge that gap with the conventional producer.”
Farmers can apply the all-purpose concentrated liquid fertilizer from germination to harvest as a drench, in-furrow as a liquid starter and as a foliar spray application.
