Agricultural Mineral Prospectors Inc. (“AMP”) is a private company of mineral industry professionals that explores for, tests, develops and produces organic approved agromineral fertilizer and soil amendment products. After farming and gardening organically for many years the AMP founders began in 1990 prospecting for the minerals approved for organic use by the various North American and European certifying agencies. These essential minerals approved and required by organic farmers are high calcium limestone, hard or soft rock phosphate (apatite), various potassium rich minerals (langbeinite, glauconite, orthoclase feldspar or biotite)and an ever-increasing number of trac elements.
We were aware of the inevitability of ever more stringent control of the toxic metals and pathogens contained in fertilizers and soil amendment products. Agricultural environmental legislation is already in force in various jurisdictions and will certainly be the future requirement for Ontario agriculture. Anticipating the demand for extremely clean and safe products we incorporated these standards into our exploration search parameters.
We also targeted the most reactive minerals as superior for organic and conventional operations. Spanish River Carbonatite "SRC" has been approved for use on certified organic crops and is registered as a fertilizer in Canada. SRC has also passed the various Ontario and British Columbia MOE tests which are required to have our product included as a compost amendment at the various major landfill/composting sites and as a soil amendment in those jurisdictions where parks, playing fields, lawns, forests and gardens are being legislated chemical free.
AMP performed mineralogical audits, soil sampling, geochemistry analysis and a great number of comparative tests over a variety of agriculture soils. From this work AMP recognized geoscience research has a major role to play in responding to the needs and practices of ecological farming. Beyond its conventional exploration, geological, engineering and business skills required for the mineral industry AMP continued to learn, develop and apply those geosciences skills that focus on the variability of individual minerals and the processes that transforms these unique, nascent minerals into living soil. To achieve these goals AMP has selected a number of 'case history' farms to establish long term monitoring and extended evaluations to monitor SRC inputs, develop soil-auditing procedures and improved agriculture management practices.