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CapitalPress.com
June 19, 2015
People & Places
Pelletized compost may have many uses
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
ROYAL CITY, Wash. —
Sometimes people don’t plan
on being innovators. They
sort of fall into it.
That’s what happened to
Thad Schutt and his part-
ners Chuck Graaff and Tyler
Schilperoort, co-owners of
Royal Organic Products of
Royal City. After five years
of research and development,
they’ve launched what they
believe is the first compost in
pellet form for precision agri-
culture.
Five years ago, the part-
ners didn’t own Royal Organ-
ic but were running its bulk
composting facility, between
Royal City and Vantage, for
A.M. Todd Group, a manufac-
turer of flavor compounds and
botanical extracts, primarily
mint oil, based in Kalamazoo,
Mich.
A.M. Todd started the
composting operation in 2004
as a way of getting rid of spent
mint plants after oil extraction
to keep oil production going.
Schutt, Graaff and Schilp-
eroort were approached by a
sustainable, no-till grain co-
op that wanted to add com-
post to its soil but didn’t want
to till to do so.
The three became drivers
of a project to pelletize com-
post that could be dropped
into the ground with seed or
fertilizer.
“We didn’t have a lot of
corporate support, but all
three of us wanted to get the
game going,” Schutt said.
“In the composting indus-
try a lot of the mentality is re-
cycling or reduction of waste.
It’s management of waste.
The three of us all come from
farming backgrounds and
think of compost as a product.
Good quality product is our
driving force as opposed to
waste management,” Schutt
said.
“We knew the biggest
issue was getting compost
out of its bulk application.
There’s a lot of handling, spe-
cialized equipment and die-
sel involved in applying it in
bulk. It gets costly,” he said.
Bulk compost is used pri-
marily in organic food pro-
duction, not so much in con-
ventional because it is too
costly or perceived as too
costly, he said.
In 2011, A.M. Todd Group
was purchased by Wild Fla-
vors Inc. of Erlanger, Ky.
Composting didn’t fit in the
corporate vision, so Schutt,
Graaff and Schilperoort
bought Royal Organic Prod-
ucts in 2012 and continued
research and development of
For the Capital Press
T
OWNER, N.D.— Our
boys were into a series
of books for a while that
had titles like “Who Would
Win? Tarantula vs. Scorpion,”
or, “Who Would Win? Komo-
do Dragon vs. King Cobra.”
They had a lot of animal ed-
ucation, some drama and a
showdown. A fitting read for
the Taylor boys.
We’re working on what
might be next in the series,
“Who Would Win? Rancher
vs. Raccoon.” I’m not sure
if anyone will buy it because
they know how it’ll end. It’s
not a fair fight.
I’ve been in that battle for
a long time, but it’s gone to a
new level as I try to feed a lit-
tle cat food to a growing herd
Capital Press Managers
Mike O’Brien .............................Publisher
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Entire contents copyright © 2015
EO Media Group
dba Capital Press
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Thad Schutt and Chuck Graaff hold pelletized compost in their hands, June 8, that is being used with
wheat, canola and barley and could be used for many crops. Much of their spring production is in the
bags in the background.
Western Innovator
Thad Schutt
Age: 47
Born and raised: Born in Sunnyside,
Wash., raised on a farm near there.
Family: Wife, Lisa, educational consul-
tant. Daughter, Sofia, 5.
Occupation: president and co-owner, Royal Organic Products,
Royal City, Wash., since 2012.
Work History: Crop duster, flight instructor, Prosser, Wash., 1992
to 1995; mint buyer and fieldman for A.M. Todd Group, Caldwell,
Idaho, 1995 to 2000; North American purchasing manager, A.M.
Todd, 2000 to 2006; manager, Royal Organic Products, 2006 to
2012.
pelletized compost.
Among their challenges
was producing a pellet small
enough to be used with fertil-
izing or seeding drills while
maintaining nutrients and or-
ganic matter.
They consulted with a
pelletizing specialist. They
worked on pellet shape, de-
sign and hardness. Their bar-
rel-shaped pellets are slightly
more than 1/8th inch in diame-
ter and up to 1/2 inch in length.
“Our big innovation was
low volume application with
the seed into the seed zone for
immediate treatment. That’s
where it becomes economic
as opposed to massive bulk
application for the entire soil,”
Schutt said.
The breakthrough in that
came with the help of Jill
Clapperton, a Spokane soil
health scientist, he said.
“It’s putting the pellet very
close to the seed to make con-
tact quickly. It comes down to
proximity and density of mate-
rial to seed,” Schutt said. “Mi-
crobiology is the big thing. It
migrates along the root path as
the roots grow so you get more
efficient use of nutrients to the
plant.”
They discovered that the
temperature at which pellets
are manufactured is very
critical to the preservation of
microbiology for delivery to
the soil.
“Protecting our biology is
our big deal. Not too hot or
dry. The right mix of tem-
perature and moisture,” said
Graaff.
“No one else is pelletizing
compost that we know of,
at least not like this,” Shutt
said. “The secret is getting
small enough pellets to go
through an air drill when
planting seed. We have two
patents pending on use of the
pellets in low volume use in
agriculture and using them
for seed bulking.”
Their product, called
Compell, has been field test-
ed for four years and entered
commercial production at a
plant they began operation
south of George in April.
They plan to produce about
20,000 tons annually and an-
ticipate growth.
Clapperton said Compell
is a natural, carbon-based
product, a recycling of bio-
mass with very high water
holding capacity.
“It’s like a little sponge
around the seed,” she said,
there for the seed as soon as
it germinates and begins to
grow.
It could help crops in
drought and struggling on
eroded knolls, she said. It’s
innovative and could benefit
a large array of crops, she
said.
Schutt is a good listener,
she said.
“He listened to what peo-
ple wanted. A compost prod-
uct. A dry product, but not
powdery to clog drills,” she
said.
Compell is a blend of the
company’s two bulk prod-
ucts, Soil SupliMint and
Royal Classic Compost. The
former is made only from
mint plants after oil ex-
traction. It’s nutrient-rich, an
organic compost suited for
organic uses.
Royal Classic is made from
yard waste, food scraps, cull
nursery trees and other green
and wood wastes. No manure
nor biosolids are used.
SupliMint and Royal
Classic are used in organic
apples, cherries, pears and
wine grapes. It’s also used in
potatoes, wheat, carrots, on-
ions and other crops.
The bulk composts sell
for $23 to $32 per ton and
applied at two to five tons per
acre cost $46 to $160 per acre
before the cost of hauling and
spreading. It’s usually mixed
into the top three to five inch-
es of soil with a harrow or
disc.
Compell sells for 25 cents
per pound. The ideal applica-
tion rate is 40 to 50 pounds
per acre on dryland wheat so
it costs $10 to $13 per acre
and hauling costs are less
than bulk, Schutt said. Ap-
plication is nothing extra be-
cause a drill is already seed-
Compost pellets, called Com-
pell, manufactured by Royal
Organic Products, Royal City,
Wash., are about 1/8th-inch
diameter and 1/2-inch long for
use in seeding and fertilizing
equipment.
ing or fertilizing each field.
The cost of materials, haul-
ing and spreading is at least
90 percent less with pellets
than bulk compost in dryland
wheat application, he said.
Compell provides nutrients
but it also provides organic
matter that regular fertilizers
don’t have that compliments
fertilizers and provides water
holding capacity and a diverse
microbiology that boosts
yields, he said.
“We see healthier plants,
increased tillering, better head
development and evidence of
disease suppression,” he said.
The company contracted
with Clapperton for indepen-
dent validation of field tests
showing 20 to 24 percent in-
creased yields in wheat when
Compell is a supplement to
full fertilizer applications.
Yields have increased 31 per-
cent in canola and 34 percent
in barley, Schutt said.
A dry pea trial was wiped
out by hail in Montana last
year and a dry bean trial near
Spokane met the same fate be-
cause of drought, he said.
“We’re looking at those
and other crops. While our
customers are primarily wheat
right now, canola and some
barley, we will see where it
goes,” Schutt said.
It has huge potential,
Graaff said.
Tree fruit and wine grapes
are possibilities “because
while the intent is precision
application during seeding,
the pellet works with fertilizer
for almost any kind of agricul-
tural application,” Schutt said.
The company is offering
Compell as Compro to the turf
industry and for golf courses
and municipalities.
Cowboy
Logic
Ryan Taylor
of cats we have on mouse pa-
trol around the ranch yard a
mile from our house. We pre-
fer to keep the cat herd away
from our front porch, so I feed
them in the shop.
It started simple, filling a
couple of empty coffee cans
with cat food to leave in the
shop so I could pour out a
daily kitty ration in the cat
trough. It wasn’t long before
I’d find the coffee cans with
the lids pried off and the cat
food polished off. Ring-tailed
raccoon food bandits.
So I put the cat food in a
plastic five gallon pail with
a lid snapped on tight. I can
hardly get the lid pried off
those buckets so I figured it
would be safe. Nope. I think
they tipped the buckets over,
body slammed them and
popped the lids.
One day I used the shop
vacuum to suck up some cat
food I found in the air intake of
the pickup ahead of the air filter
that must have been put there
by mice for winter storage.
Sure enough, the next day, the
shop vac was tipped over with
its top pried off and the cat food
picked clean from the dirt.
Cat food must have the
addiction of crack cocaine to
these coons. I tried storing
the cat food containers in the
cab of my good loader trac-
tor. They never got it, but the
bottom of the door was cov-
ered with muddy coon prints.
They chewed and clawed off
about two feet of the weather
stripping, and got their dirty
little paws through the crack
trying to reach the latch with
their opposable thumbs. It
was not a cuss-free morning
in the shed when I found the
weather stripping chewed off
of my good tractor. I don’t put
cat food in there anymore.
That’s when I bought one
of those live traps for rac-
coons. I’d have gladly used
some leg hold or body traps,
but that would have been too
tough on the cats or the dog
when he roams the shed.
I caught one coon the first
night, took care of him, but
ended up losing a key piece,
the trap tripper. The trap is
still out of commission.
So, I found a cupboard with
a pretty strong latch for stor-
age. They got into that. Now I
moved the cat food it into an
old file cabinet drawer that has
a locking button on it. They
sniffed it out, picked the correct
drawer and have scratched and
tried, but, so far, haven’t gotten
the food. I’m guessing it’s only
a matter of time.
Next, I’m thinking of
building some kind of box
that I could secure with a
combination padlock. I’ll
likely have to change the lock
regularly as I am sure these
coons could crack the code.
And, if you were wonder-
ing about the victors of the
matches in the books men-
tioned at the beginning of this
column? It’s the scorpion, the
king cobra, and, apparently,
the raccoon.
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Wednesday, July 8
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Saturday, June 20
Humane Chicken Processing Sem-
inar, 10 a.m.-2: 30p.m. Oakville
Regional Event Center, Oakville,
360/858-1317. This seminar will
describe humane methods for
processing chickens using equip-
ment that can be rented from the
county extension office.
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Point, 541-776-7371. Instructor:
Gwendolyn Ellen, Integrated
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When cat food drives raccoons, and cowboys, crazy
By RYAN M. TAYLOR
Capital Press
State University. Pre-registration
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Friday, June 26
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Poplar for Biofuels field tour, 10: 30
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tion Site, Hayden, 253-241-5043.
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OSU Caneberry Field Day, 1 p.m.-
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and Extension Center, OSU,
Aurora, 971-373-5912.
Friday, July 3
Forestry Shortcourse, 10 a.m.-
1p.m. West Bonner Library,
Priest River, 208-446-1680. This
six-session program will help forest
Friday, July 10
Forestry Shortcourse, 10a.m.-
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