YORK — Marc Dennis was sitting at his desk in his garage in York when he thought of an idea, one that he thought could significantly help farmers boost their yields.
Dennis had spent his life in the agronomy business, working with his father, who had a doctorate in agronomy and owned an agronomy company based in Kansas.
Marcus Dennis, the inventor of Nitro-Mag fertilizer, had his lightbulb moment while sitting at his desk in his garage in York. He realized magnesium and other plant nutrients could be used to create a new kind of fertilizer.
After his father died, Dennis had taken the business over, eventually moving it from Kansas to York in 1990 because of York’s location. It was close to Lincoln, the interstate and his clients. Dennis raised his children in York with his wife, Lynn, who has taught kindergarten in York for 20 years.
In 2017, after decades of working in the agronomy business, developing his knowledge about plants and fertilizer, and learning about magnesium and liquid fertilizer products, Dennis decided to retire.
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But his retirement lasted for only three weeks, which was just enough time for him to have the space and freedom to think. “I had all this knowledge and I wanted to do something about it,” Dennis recalled.
After Marc Dennis thought of his idea for a new fertilizer blend, he took a kitchen blender from his home, brought it down to the garage, and blended urea and a magnesium product. The ratio wasn’t right at the time, he said, but this was how it began and eventually it came to look like the jar of liquid pictured here.
He was sitting at his desk in his two-room garage, less than 50 feet away from his lab, when he realized that a long-term interest of his, liquid nitrogen, could be made by combining a a liquid magnesium product with urea, a solid nitrogen product.
Dennis rushed out to the other room of his garage, grabbed a blender from his kitchen, and blended the liquid magnesium and the solid nitrogen together.
“The ratio wasn’t right at the time,” he said, but over the course of the next three years he mastered the process. Just like that, Dennis said, by mixing two existing products he created a new liquid fertilizer that had never existed. Nitro-Mag was born in that garage.
The liquid magnesium product came from GMCO, the company that now produces Nitro-Mag. Though Dennis said he owns the patents for Nitro-Mag, he has an agreement with GMCO.
After perfecting the mixture, Dennis said some farmers he knew tested it out in their fields. Immediately, he said, they noticed that it was adding bushels.
Marc Dennis first mixed the dry solid nitrogen and liquid magnesium in his basement. The first blender was a small kitchen blender. Now, the company that produces Nitro-Mag has a blender than can make 6,000 gallons in 20 minutes.
GMCO recently opened a new facility for producing the fertilizer in Grand Island and hopes to market it around the world, said Dennis. The fertilizer was “born in Nebraska” and is “made in Nebraska,” he said.
Dennis attributed the success of Nitro-Mag in the field to its nutrients, such as magnesium, as well as the specific form of nitrogen it has — NH2, also known as an amine — which he said the plant can use more efficiently.
Far from retired, Dennis is currently the lead agronomist at GMCO. Plus, he is now working on other new products in his garage in York.
“Lots of great ideas have started in garages,” he said.
