Agro-Vital was established in The Netherlnads by Jan Feersma Hoekstra in 1999. Jan, who had worked as an Agronomist before becoming Managing Director of an Ag Chem company, could see the damaging side effects of the products he was supplying and advocating.

Despite being advised against pursuing a more sustainable approach to agronomy by everyone in the industry; 24 years later, Agro-Vital continues to grow and now operates in multiple European countries.

Agro-Vital has established a name for providing quality alternative products that maintain or even improve yield, consistently, while significantly mitigating damaging effects on soil, crop and the wider environment.

Agro-Vital UK started in 2012, and, like in other European counties, works closely with Agriton. Their ethos and values are the same and in most instances the products and services supplied complement each other to the benefit of the farm, the farmer and the wider environment.

Agro-Vital not only understand the science behind Agronomy and plant physiology but they also have a conscience when it comes to the environment and specifically soil health.

Many agrochemical and fertiliser products have unwanted side effects that require additional management or the use of further products to counteract them. These further products could also have side effects and the cycle continues.

Take soil-applied solid nitrate fertilisers for example: Ammonium Nitrate forces a plant to take on significant quantities of water to dilute the toxic effects. This inflates individual cells, think of a balloon full of water, making them easier to puncture by sucking-insects, more susceptible to disease and at a higher risk of lodging. This is why breeding companies across the world use high levels of nitrate to increase disease and lodging risks to select varieties with greatest resistance.

If using Ammonium Nitrate means using more products, PGRs, insecticides, fungicides etc, to counteract side effects to grow yield, we think the system is broken; especially as ammonium nitrate is hugely inefficient being easily leached and requiring a significant proportion of a plant’s energy to convert the nitrate into a form it can actually use.

This is an example of just one situation where a product used by almost every farmer in the UK isn’t necessarily good for the plant, the soil, the farmer or the wider environment.

At Agro-Vital we believe that we have done our job when you need fewer products to grow a standard yield, not more!

Before any Agro-Vital product is released to market we carry out a minimum of three years of our own trials as well as three years of independent trials carried out by recognised trial companies. These trials are carried out in a number of soil types, climates, altitudes and following a number of different crops. Trials are done at pot, plot and farm scale to give a real world interpretation of results.

This gives us great confidence in our products and should give you confidence too.

Due to these high standards we set, we make sure all of our trial results are publicly available. That’s, right, all of our trial data, the good the bad and the indifferent. All data is good data as something can always be learnt.

For access to our trial data and reports click here.

From 2024 Agro-Vital will be establishing a number of monitor farms across the UK and Ireland. These farms will host open days to help demonstrate how the incorporation of Agro-Vital products into their nutrition plans has helped their farming enterprises.

To keep up to date with the latest developments and find out where and when open days will be held please subscribe to our monitor farms news letter.