Faces of Technology
Growing Nutrients for a
Growing World
Paul Kucera was preparing to graduate with
a chemical engineering degree from the
University of South Florida with three job offers
on the table.
“Two of them were in Michigan and one was
in Florida. I’m originally from Buffalo, New York,
so I already knew what Michigan was like,” he
joked.
But it wasn’t just Florida’s temperate climate
that convinced Kucera to take a job with Cargill
Crop Nutrition, a predecessor of The Mosaic
Company. “That was just icing on the cake,”
said Kucera.
He understood the company was leading the
industry in helping to grow the world’s food
with an environmentally conscious approach.
Today, after 23 years with the phosphate
industry, Kucera continues contributing to that
mission as senior engineer advisor for research
and development. He guides decision-making
to set the stage for Mosaic’s future innovations
in mining and manufacturing phosphate
essential to making fertilizer.
Paul Kucera
Senior Engineer Advisor, Research and Development
The Mosaic Company | www.mosaicco.com
Education: B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of South Florida
One of Kucera’s proudest moments was
working on the team that established the
company’s signature MicroEssentials fertilizer.
When a customer approached them in 1997 for
a better way to grow canola, they were tasked
with inding the most appropriate, eficient way
to deliver essential nutrients to the plant. The
result was combining essential nutrients into one
powerful granule, MicroEssentials, a formula still
unmatched in the industry.
Kucera equates it to a bag full of marbles. “If
you mix them all in a bag and grab a handful,
you’re going to get a variety of different colors.”
But MicroEssentials is like a swirly marble. All
the essential macronutrients, along with
micronutrients like zinc, are fused into one
granule, ensuring every plant in a crop receives
the nutrients it needs in perfect amounts.
Farmers know exactly what they will pull out of
the bag every time.
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Company: The Mosaic Company is the world’s leading producer
and marketer of concentrated phosphate and potash.
It employs approximately 9,000 people in six countries
and participates in every aspect of crop nutrition
development. In the U.S., Florida is home to Mosaic’s
phosphate operations headquarters and many of its
phosphate production facilities.
“It’s been a tremendous breakthrough,” said Kucera. “We went from being
a very small production to making nearly 2 million tons of the MicroEssentials
product every year.”
Technologies like MicroEssentials align with Kucera’s passion for doing more
with less. In a world with 7 billion people and growing, eficiency is more
important than ever. The company will undoubtedly face competition
as others join in the micronutrients arena, but it’s a challenge Kucera
embraces.