Brandie Weikle’s June 21, 2026 article for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio programme What on Earth explains how the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has affected Canadian agriculture and the reasons for how that may lead to new fertilizer technology adoption, Note Links have been removed,
It sounds like weird science and some have dismissed it as “snake oil.”
But an emerging crop fertilizer technology is gaining interest amid an acute shortage caused by wars in the Middle East. Though research is in early stages and has not yet been peer-reviewed, the method is also being explored as one possible way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from traditional chemical fertilizers.
The cold plasma method essentially replicates lightning, similar to the novelty lightning globes popular in the ’90s.
The fertilizer is made on site at individual farms, a potential advantage as geopolitical conflicts disrupt supply.
About one-third of the world’s fertilizer is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, where traffic has been severely restricted since the beginning of March [2026]. Compounding the problem, Iran is a major producer of fertilizer and nitrogen, and its industry has been damaged by airstrikes.
Jeff Harrison, chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario, said that has pushed fertilizer prices sharply higher.
“Expenses are exceeding revenues this year, and that’s not a pretty picture for farmers,” said Harrison, who grows corn and soybeans in Quinte, about 100 kilometres from Kingston, Ont.
Weikle’s June 21, 2026 article provides scientific details about ‘lightning fertilizer’,
To understand how cold plasma fertilizer works, it helps to get a handle on the vocabulary. Plasma is a word used to describe a component in your blood, but it has a different meaning in physics.
“If you put energy into liquids, you can make them gaseous,” said Stephan Reuter, a professor of plasma physics from Polytechnique Montréal who is researching plasma fertilizer. “And if you put more energy into these gases, you can transfer these gases into a plasma.”
Lightning is plasma. The northern lights are plasma. The little shock you get when you walk across a carpet and then touch a light switch is plasma, he said.
Lightning is a natural fertilizer because its energy converts nitrogen in the air into a form plants can absorb, Reuter told What on Earth. That combines with rainwater to make nitric acid, and falls onto soil as liquid fertilizer.
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Next, Weikle’s June 21, 2026 article covers the current situation in Canada, Note: Links have been removed,
A couple of different North American manufacturers are making devices that mimic this process.
Machines made by U.S. company Green Lightning are the most widely distributed in Canada. They are sold here by Nytro Ag Corp., run by Chris Nykolaishen, a farmer who grows wheat and canola near Kamsack, Sask.
Since starting in 2024, he said he has sold about 200 Green Lightning machines to 82 farms. Some larger farms have bought two or more machines, but that is a small group among the 189,874 farms counted in Canada’s last census.
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The most common Green Lightning system, the Thunder 365, is not quite two metres high and about 1.2 metres wide and deep. Nykolaishen said it costs $66,500.
A plasma reactor inside each machine creates the kind of colourful lightning seen in novelty globes. From there, it breaks apart nitrogen molecules to make nitrous oxide, Nykolaishen said.
That is sent into a special chamber, where it is infused into water to make nitric acid, becoming liquid fertilizer.
Nykolaishen recommends farmers start with a small trial in their first season and get to know the specifications, including the need for a reverse-osmosis system to filter the water.
Hard-won cynicism
That cautious approach is more appealing for farmers, he said, because many “look at this as if it’s snake oil.” The cynicism is hard won, he said.
“There’s been a lot of things that have come through agriculture that just haven’t worked out.”
For those who do make the leap, Nykolaishen said the system can produce 36,500 gallons (about 140,000 litres) of fertilizer a year if run continuously. That is enough to fertilize 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of wheat and canola with no other fertilizer, or a larger farm when combined with other products.
Each season, the farmers he works with are refining the system, but they need more data.
“The hard thing about agriculture is you really only get one shot at R&D every year, so you gotta make sure you make it count,” he said.
In these images supplied by Stephan Reuter, left, a professor of engineering physics at Polytechnique Montréal, the middle photo shows plasma filaments moving between two metal electrodes. The filaments generate reactive molecules from air, which are brought into water to make liquid fertilizer for hydroponic plants. At right, a technology demonstration used in high school and CEGEP settings. (Submitted by Stephan Reuter)
Reuter’s team at Polytechnique Montréal has funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to test cold plasma fertilizer. He said it is the only team in the country doing so.
The group is testing the fertilizer in a greenhouse setting on hydroponic lettuce. The findings are relevant, Reuter said, but not an apples-to-apples comparison for soil in a field of wheat or corn.
A credible “tutorial review” explaining the cold plasma method and its potential advantages was published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal RSC Sustainability in 2025, but the research is so new there are not yet peer-reviewed studies.
There are also questions about how well the system will work at scale and integrate with existing farm equipment, since many farms use rigs designed to spread dry, granular fertilizer, not liquid.
But that wasn’t a problem on the Yorkton, Sask., farm near the Manitoba border where Jordan Keep and his business partner tried the system for the first time last year.
“We were already running liquid fertilizer, so we didn’t have to change much in terms of our seeding equipment,” he said.
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Climate benefits are covered in Weikle’s June 21, 2026 article, which also features an embedded radio segment (27 mins. 49 secs.) about ‘lightning fertilizer’ and Canadian agriculture.
620 CKRM: The Voice of Saskatchewn offers both a radio segment and an online January 19, 2026 article by Kevin Hursh featuring Chris Nykolaishen and lightning fertilizer,
The idea of farmers making their own liquid nitrogen fertilizer on-farm with a system called Green Lightning has been around for a few years and it continues to expand.
The Canadian distributor is a family business called Nytro based in Kamsack. Nytro had a booth at the Western Canadian Crop Production Show in Saskatoon [Saskatchewan] last week and will have a booth at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon [Manitoba] this week.
The Green Lightning theory is the same as how a lightning storm creates some nitrogen that falls with the rain. In this case, electricity is the lightning that produces nitrogen within water. The basic Green Lightning factory has been a six-head unit making 100 gallons a day using about $4 worth of electricity.
A larger, insulated unit within a 10-foot sea can is now available. It can generate 500 gallons of product a day with an electrical cost of $30 to $35 a day.
President of Nytro Chris Nykolaishen says the nitrogen content is equivalent to 3 pounds of N per gallon of water.
“We’ve done replicated plot trials to see if that is an effective rate in which you could use it, and the trials have been positive,” said Nykolaishen, “It’s difficult to measure because of the lack of salt in the product, but we’re using a TDS meter, and with the lab that we use, we’ve developed a formula that you can easily determine the amount of nitrogen you have in the product based on a parts per million basis.”
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Currently, 65 farmers across Canada use the machines, he added.
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Cost is the big driver. The Green Lightning price per pound of nitrogen is far less than conventional fertilizer, even after factoring in the capital cost of the units.
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Weikle’s June 21, 2026 article notes this cautious response from the federal government,
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In an email to CBC, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (AAFC) said it recognizes innovation will play a role in the future of fertilizer use in Canada, and that plasma-based fertilizers have the potential to improve efficiency and reduce environmental impacts.
“At the same time, conventional fertilizers and manure continue to play a critical and indispensable role in supporting crop production, food security, and farm productivity in Canada,” the email said.
In response to a question about how AAFC will help farmers cope with the current fertilizer shortage, the statement said, in part, that it’s working with partners to “identify supply pressures ahead of the 2027 growing season.”
Stephan Reuter is an assistant professor in physics of plasmas and spectroscopy.
He is also Head of TransMedTech [chair for plasma medicine].
His research involves the interaction of non-thermal plasmas with liquids and diagnostic methods such as ultrafast laser spectroscopy, spectral imaging, and single-shot techniques. Studied application fields are plasmas for medicine, environment, and material synthesis.
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Plasma for Infinitesimal Reactions
Plasma (singular state of the matter, lightning is a common example) are able to generate highly reactive species at low temperature. They are qualified as excited. Generate those reactive species help to induce chemical reactions at low temperature, which couldn’t happen in the wanted conditions. In low-temperature plasma, there are highly reactive species -electrons, and other «cold» molecules. The results are unbalanced medium and a loss in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Thus, it’s possible to create chemical reactions in new media such as microorganisms, living and non-living (nano-scaled structures). More precisely, those researches are focused on the plasma-liquid interfaces of plasma sources.
Nano-magic for lab/living and society
The principal purpose is to advance plasma medicine for diagnostic, medical care, food safety or materials.
According to recent developments in science, Pr Reuter’s approach follows sustainable development principles at the economic scale (positive economic impact), social (health) and environment (responsible plasma sources).
As for TransMedTech, there’s this on its About page,
History
Officially launched in 2017, the Institut TransMedTech (iTMT) is a transdisciplinary open collaboration initiative that aims to develop innovative medical technologies to meet the needs of the healthcare community and train the next generation of the medical technology sector.
The Institut TransMedTech was born of an initiative led by Polytechnique Montréal, with the collaboration of 4 other founding institutions (CHU Sainte-Justine, Université de Montréal, CHUM, Jewish General Hospital of Montreal) and some 30 other partners. Three other institutions joined in 2023: HEC Montréal, the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM) and the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI).
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Lightning as fertilizer? What an extraordinary time we live in.
I have listings for two art/science events in Vancouver (Canada).
Dance, poetry and quantum entanglement
From April 20, 2017 (tonight) – April 22, 2017, there will be 8 p.m. performances of Lesley Telford’s ‘Three Sets/Relating At A Distance; My tongue, your ear / If / Spooky Action at a Distance (phase 1)’ at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie St, Yes, that third title is a reference to Einstein’s famous phrase describing his response of the concept of quantum entanglement.
An April 19, 2017 article by Janet Smith for the Georgia Straight features the dancer’s description of the upcoming performances,
One of the clearest definitions of quantum entanglement—a phenomenon Albert Einstein dubbed “spooky action at a distance”—can be found in a vampire movie.
In Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive Tom Hiddleston’s depressed rock-star bloodsucker explains it this way to Tilda Swinton’s Eve, his centuries-long partner: “When you separate an entwined particle and you move both parts away from the other, even at opposite ends of the universe, if you alter or affect one, the other will be identically altered or affected.”
In fact, it was by watching the dark love story that Vancouver dance artist Lesley Telford learned about quantum entanglement—in which particles are so closely connected that they cannot act independently of one another, no matter how much space lies between them. She became fascinated not just with the scientific possibilities of the concept but with the romantic ones. …
“I thought, ‘What a great metaphor,’ ” the choreographer tells the Straight over sushi before heading into a Dance Centre studio. “It’s the idea of quantum entanglement and how that could relate to human entanglement.…It’s really a metaphor for human interactions.”
First, though, as is so often the case with Telford, she needed to form those ideas into words. So she approached poet Barbara Adler to talk about the phenomenon, and then to have her build poetry around it—text that the writer will perform live in Telford’s first full evening of work here.
“Barbara talked a lot about how you feel this resonance with people that have been in your life, and how it’s tied into romantic connections and love stories,” Telford explains. “As we dig into it, it’s become less about that and more of an underlying vibration in the work; it feels like we’ve gone beyond that starting point.…I feel like she has a way of making it so down-to-earth and it’s given us so much food to work with. Are we in control of the universe or is it in control of us?”
Spooky Action at a Distance, a work for seven dancers, ends up being a string of duets that weave—entangle—into other duets. …
Lesley Telford’s choreography brings together a technically rigorous vocabulary and a thought-provoking approach, refined by her years dancing with Nederlands Dans Theater and creating for companies at home and abroad, most recently Ballet BC. This triple bill features an excerpt of a new creation inspired by Einstein’s famous phrase “spooky action at a distance”, referring to particles that are so closely linked, they share the same existence: a collaboration with poet Barbara Adler, the piece seeks to extend the theory to human connections in our phenomenally interconnected world. The program also includes a new extended version of If, a trio based on Anne Carson’s poem, and the duet My tongue, your ear, with text by Wislawa Szymborska.
Here’s what appears to be an excerpt from a rehearsal for ‘Spooky Action …’,
I’m not super fond of the atonal music/sound they’re using. The voice you hear is Adler’s and here’s more about Barbara Adler from her Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),
Barbara Adler is a musician, poet, and storyteller based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a past Canadian Team Slam Champion, was a founding member of the Vancouver Youth Slam, and a past CBC Poetry Face Off winner.[1]
She was a founding member of the folk band The Fugitives with Brendan McLeod, C.R. Avery and Mark Berube[2][3] until she left the band in 2011 to pursue other artistic ventures. She was a member of the accordion shout-rock band Fang, later Proud Animal, and works under the pseudonym Ten Thousand Wolves.[4][5][6][7][8]
In 2004 she participated in the inaugural Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, winning the Spoken Wordlympics with her fellow team members Shane Koyczan, C.R. Avery, and Brendan McLeod.[9][10] In 2010 she started on The BC Memory Game, a traveling storytelling project based on the game of memory[11] and has also been involved with the B.C. Schizophrenia Society Reach Out Tour for several years.[12][13][14] She is of Czech-Jewish descent.[15][16]
Barbara Adler has her bachelor’s degree and MFA from Simon Fraser University, with a focus on songwriting, storytelling, and community engagement.[17][18] In 2015 she was a co-star in the film Amerika, directed by Jan Foukal,[19][20] which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.[21]
Finally, Telford is Artist in Residence at the Dance Centre and TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and accelerator-based science.
To buy tickets ($32 or less with a discount), go here. Telford will be present on April 21, 2017 for a post-show talk.
Pi Theatre’s ‘Long Division’
This theatrical performance of concepts in mathematics runs from April 26 – 30, 2017 (check here for the times as they vary) at the Annex at 823 Seymour St. From the Georgia Straight’s April 12, 2017 Arts notice,
Mathematics is an art form in itself, as proven by Pi Theatre’s number-charged Long Division. This is a “refreshed remount” of Peter Dickinson’s ambitious work, one that circles around seven seemingly unrelated characters (including a high-school math teacher, a soccer-loving imam, and a lesbian bar owner) bound together by a single traumatic incident. Directed by Richard Wolfe, with choreography by Lesley Telford and musical score by Owen Belton, it’s a multimedia, movement-driven piece that has a strong cast. …
Long Division uses text, multimedia, and physical theatre to create a play about the mathematics of human connection.
Long Division focuses on seven characters linked – sometimes directly, sometimes more obliquely – by a sequence of tragic events. These characters offer lessons on number theory, geometry and logic, while revealing aspects of their inner lives, and collectively the nature of their relationships to one another.
Playwright: Peter Dickinson Director: Richard Wolfe Choreographer: Lesley Telford, Inverso Productions Composer: Owen Belton Assistant Director: Keltie Forsyth
Cast: Anousha Alamian, Jay Clift, Nicco Lorenzo Garcia, Jennifer Lines, Melissa Oei, LInda Quibell & Kerry Sandomirsky
Costume Designer: Connie Hosie Lighting Designer: Jergus Oprsal Set Designer: Lauchlin Johnston Projection Designer: Jamie Nesbitt Production Manager: Jayson Mclean Stage Manager: Jethelo E. Cabilete Assistant Projection Designer: Cameron Fraser Lighting Design Associate: Jeff Harrison
Dates/Times: April 26 – 29 at 8pm, April 29 and 30 at 2pm
Student performance on April 27 at 1pm
A Talk-Back will take place after the 2pm show on April 29th.
Shawn Conner engaged the playwright, Peter Dickinson in an April 20, 2017 Q&A (question and answer) for the Vancouver Sun,
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Q: Had you been working on Long Division for a long time?
A: I’d been working on it for about five years. I wrote a previous play called The Objecthood of Chairs, which has a similar style in that I combine lecture performance with physical and dance theatre. There are movement scores in both pieces.
In that first play, I told the story of two men and their relationship through the history of chair design. It was a combination of mining my research about that and trying to craft a story that was human and where the audience could find a way in. When I was thinking about a subject for a new play, I took the profession of one of the characters in that first play, who was a math teacher, and said, “Let’s see what happens to his character, let’s see where he goes after the breakup of his relationship.”
At first, I wrote it (Long Division) in an attempt at completely real, kitchen-sink naturalism, and it was a complete disaster. So I went back into this lecture-style performance.
Q: Long Division is set in a bar. Is the setting left over from that attempt at realism?
A: I guess so. It’s kind of a meta-theatrical play in the sense that the characters address the audience, and they’re aware they’re in a theatrical setting. One of the characters is an actress, and she comments on the connection between mathematics and theatre.
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Q: This is being called a “refreshed” remount. What’s changed since its first run
A: It’s mostly been cuts, and some massaging of certain sections. And I think it’s a play that actually needs a little distance.
Like mathematics, the patterns only reveal themselves at a remove. I think I needed that distance to see where things were working and where they could be better. So it’s a gift for me to be given this opportunity, to make things pop a little more and to make the math, which isn’t meant to be difficult, more understandable and relatable.
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You may have noticed that Lesley Telford from Spooky Action is also choreographer for this production. I gather she’s making a career of art/science pieces, at least for now.
In the category of ‘Vancouver being a small town’, Telford lists a review of one of her pieces, ‘AUDC’s Season Finale at The Playhouse’, on her website. Intriguingly, the reviewer is Peter Dickinson who in addition to being the playwright with whom she has collaborated for Pi Theatre’s ‘Long Division’ is also the Director of SFU’s (Simon Fraser University’s) Institute for Performance Studies. I wonder how many more ways these two crisscross professionally? Personally and for what it’s worth, it might be a good idea for Telford (and Dickinson, if he hasn’t already done so) to make readers aware of their professional connections when there’s a review at stake.
Final comment: I’m not sure how quantum entanglement or mathematics with the pieces attributed to concepts from those fields but I’m sure anyone attempting to make the links will find themselves stimulated.
ETA April 21, 2017: I’m adding this event even though the tickets are completely subscribed. There will be a standby line the night of the event (from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies The Hidden Beauty of Mathematics event page,
