Nature solutions urgently needed

Data is vital. But data only helps if people are building the solutions which enable that data to be employed for positive action. When I looked around the nature tech space, I saw an abundance of data (awesome!) and a severe lack of solutions (not awesome!).

After many months of pondering my next career move, something super-exciting came along. Fertiliser. Really?! I hear you ask. Yes!

Agriculture is the sector with by far the biggest impacts on nature and ironically also the industrial sector with the highest levels of dependence on nature. So it’s fertile ground for solutions (if you excuse the pun!).

The synthetic fertiliser industry ($200bn) uses a whopping 5 tonnes of carbon per tonne of fertiliser produced. Meaning the industry as a whole emits more carbon just in production than aviation and shipping combined. But then it causes further climate damage through nitrous oxide emissions after application and by degrading the organic matter in soils and reducing soil carbon.

It doesn’t stop there

By applying synthetic fertiliser, the natural symbiotic bonds between plants and the soil microbiome are broken. The plant gets a short term hit of nitrogen directly into the roots and so stops interacting with beneficial microorganisms for its nutrients. Add in doses of fungicide and herbicide to the crops and the microbiome of the soil is often nearly completely obliterated. This leaves the crops solely dependent on more synthetic fertiliser for nutrients and lacking in the health and resilience offered by the microbiome – leading to the need for even more synthetic chemicals to be applied. A vicious cycle which is greatly beneficial for… well, no-one really except the synthetic chemical companies.

Then there are innovations such as controlled release fertiliser which packages the chemicals in microplastic beads. I have no words for what I feel about that on my food.

The next worst thing about synthetic fertilisers is the run-off to local ecosystems. DEFRA estimates that 70% of nitrogen and 25% of phosphorous pollution in UK waters comes from agriculture. Because the unnatural chemicals cannot be held onto by the degraded soil. The synthetic fertiliser therefore  drains away quickly and causes nutrient chaos in local rivers, an issue less well reported but just as damaging as the UK sewage crisis.

Finally, at the end of the chain of destruction is our food.

Crops are grown with synthetic chemicals and in depleted soils, without their natural allies to help them absorb their full nutrient profile. A scientific review in the journal Food, in 2024, described an ‘alarming’ decline in the nutrients in food which are vital to our health such as iron, vitamin C and calcium. Such declines are hypothesised to be linked to our mental health crisis, chronic disease crisis and so on. When the circle of life is broken, the ripple effects are insidious.

But I don’t just want to tell you all that’s bad about the current fertiliser industry. There is good news! And I know anyone reading this will greatly need a dose of that….

Many assume that we have to put up with environmental damage as the trade-off for delivering food for our growing population. We don’t.

We can have more healthy, more resilient, carbon and nature-friendly farming systems if we just listen to Mother Nature. She has a few billion years’ head start on our innovations. So, at Re-Genus we seek not to control or suppress but to empower and regenerate her.

Our fertiliser products are packed with a diverse microbiome, grown in nature, and use raw materials drawn from the circular economy (residues from other natural product sectors) for a more natural nutrient cycle, full of beneficial life.

It’s simple. It can be made and applied in any region of the world. We’re starting in the UK. But we aim to disrupt the $200bn global fertiliser industry and deliver 1% of the world’s fertiliser as natural and regenerative within a decade. That would be 10 million ha of land regenerated, 10 million tonnes of carbon saved and millions of tonnes of healthier food produced.

And crops aren’t the only place where we can use beneficial fungi and natural fertilisers. We’ve also developed a tree-growing system using the same approach – giving better survival rates and healthier trees grown without synthetics. More on that to come…

We’re so grateful to our early customers – the pioneers of regenerative and organic farming – for taking the risk to go first and being willing to learn with us about what works and where we can improve. You are all amazing and are helping us create positive ripples which we hope will turn into waves.

We’ll be updating regularly on our progress.

We’ll aim to keep it honest and transparent because we won’t always get it right first time. But we want everyone to learn fast what works! We also stand open to working with others who want to join our field as there is so much work to do!