We promote an agricultural system that enhances soil fertility,
reduces production costs and increases yields and profits.

One of the biggest chal­lenges in con­tem­po­rary agri­cul­ture is a rapid­ly grow­ing world pop­u­la­tion with fast declin­ing space for agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion as well as rapid soil degra­da­tion and ero­sion through chang­ing weath­er pat­terns and plough-based pro­duc­tion. Pro­jec­tions of the UN’s Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Organ­i­sa­tion show that feed­ing a world pop­u­la­tion of 9.1 bil­lion peo­ple in 2050 would require rais­ing over­all food pro­duc­tion by some 70 per­cent. Pro­duc­tion in devel­op­ing coun­tries would need to almost dou­ble. Nine­ty per cent of the growth in crop pro­duc­tion glob­al­ly is expect­ed to come from high­er yields.


Soil erosion, Cambodia. “The nation that destroys its soil destroys istelf.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

In many parts of the world soil degra­da­tion due to tillage-based inten­sive mono-crop­ping is pro­gress­ing at a rapid pace with some­times extreme envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences. A third of the planet’s land is severe­ly degrad­ed and fer­tile soil is being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year.

This envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion is both a result and a dri­ver of social change that could be con­trolled by bet­ter agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices such as soil and water man­age­ment, crop rota­tion and diver­si­fi­ca­tion. Such a sys­tem is also more resilient against cli­mate change and fluc­tu­a­tion of com­mod­i­ty prices on the market.

Cherish your soil capital

Win-Win

Imple­ment­ing the tools of regen­er­a­tive farm­ing will ben­e­fit every­one, farm­ers, agribusi­ness­es, cus­tomers, gov­ern­ments and of course the envi­ron­ment and the plan­et as a whole. With com­bined prac­tices of no-till farm­ing, soil and water man­age­ment, inte­gra­tion of cov­er and relay crops, and chem­i­cal free inputs pro­duc­tion costs can be reduced by a sub­stan­tial amount. At the same time yields and prof­its will increase.

Crop pro­duc­ers will save mon­ey for

  • trac­tors as small­er trac­tors are suf­fi­cient for no-till
  • plough-based machin­ery
  • petrol
  • seeds/seedlings
  • labour for bed­ding out
  • labour for thin­ning out
  • labour for weeding
  • labour for spraying
  • chem­i­cal inputs such as her­bi­cides, pes­ti­cides, insec­ti­cides, fungicides

The eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit at the cen­ter of this approach is the dri­ver for scal­ing up. In com­bi­na­tion with the side effect of off­set­ting GHG emis­sions this sys­tems design prin­ci­ple gen­er­ates a true win-win for all stake­hold­ers involved.

SmartA­gro’s agron­o­mists have been engi­neer­ing and imple­ment­ing crop­ping sys­tems in many coun­tries around the world in a huge vari­ety of cli­mates and soil con­di­tions. We also have a refined toolk­it avail­able to detox and regen­er­ate soils and green non-pro­duc­tive soils, even in the desert.

Our strat­e­gy is to restore and build a liv­ing soil. For this, a large diver­si­ty of plants are used over time and space opti­miz­ing nutri­ent avail­abil­i­ty, max­i­miz­ing water reten­tion and min­i­miz­ing nutri­ent leach­ing, enhanc­ing soil func­tion­al bio­di­ver­si­ty, and enhanc­ing ben­e­fi­cial bio­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions and synergies.

The intro­duc­tion of cov­er-relay crops leads to bet­ter uti­liza­tion of avail­able nat­ur­al resources, max­i­miza­tion of bio­mass pro­duc­tion and high­er organ­ic input into the soil. More­over, by har­vest­ing the cov­er-relay crops addi­tion­al resources (fod­der, grains, fibers) and incomes are gen­er­at­ed. Keep­ing the soil cov­ered at all times pro­tects it against ero­sion and sequesters CO2 from the atmos­phere stor­ing car­bon in the soil.

Simul­ta­ne­ous rolling of cov­er crop and direct plant­i­ng of maize on the cov­er. SmartA­gro’s cov­er crop mix­es pro­duce a bio­mass up to 20t/ha (dried) that is fed back into the soil very quick­ly. Cov­ered, the soil is always pro­tect­ed against ero­sion and retains more water and bioac­tiv­i­ty for nutri­ent uptake of crops.

Direct plant­i­ng on the soil cov­er sup­press­es weeds. Ger­mi­na­tion rates do not suffer.

Soy­beans plant­ed on cov­er residue. No weeds. Increased soil fer­til­i­ty saves inputs and pro­duces high­er yields.

 This maize was direct­ly plant­ed on green cov­er while the cov­er crop was rolled. Yield was 10t/ha, which is top end for this region/ type of soil in Cam­bo­dia giv­en the low lev­el of inputs.

Knowledge transfer

SmartA­gro engages in con­sul­tan­cies and capac­i­ty build­ing of farm­ers, exten­sion ser­vices, ser­vice providers and agribui­ness­es. We are ded­i­cat­ed to rais­ing aware­ness of the val­ue of the soil cap­i­tal, the envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy of regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture. SmartA­gro seeks to build the con­nec­tion of pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor in order to dri­ve the change from farm­ing with high envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion to a regen­er­a­tive system.

Inter­crop­ping increas­es both soil fer­til­i­ty and rev­enue and decreas­es risk of crop fail­ure. Above, rub­ber, banana and soy­bean. The sys­tem is high­ly inten­si­fied, diver­si­fied and resilient to both cli­mate and mar­ket changes.

Machinery and CA

By team­ing up with machin­ery dis­trib­u­tors and ser­vice providers SmartA­gro pro­vides both access to no-till machin­ery and train­ings that demon­strate the effi­cien­cy of such equip­ment and regen­ra­tive crop­ping systems.


No-till machinery is key.

One-stop shop

This way SmartA­gro and part­ners are able to dri­ve the tran­si­tion of con­ven­tion­al plough-based agri­cul­ture to a regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture by pro­vid­ing all nec­es­sary com­po­nents of tech­nol­o­gy, knowl­edge and prac­tices in order to over­come cur­rent chal­lenges of a strug­gling sector.

Left: Con­ven­tion­al tillage, water can­not drain, machin­ery can­not be brought in, soil erosion.
Right: No-till, good drainage, soil pro­tect­ed from ero­sion, good weed con­trol, good work­ing con­di­tions for machinery.

Sil­vopas­ture, rota­tion­al graz­ing of cat­tle in tim­ber plan­ta­tion regen­er­ates the soils and allows to stack sev­er­al dif­fer­ent rev­enue streams on top of each oth­er. This holis­tic man­age­ment has the biggest draw­down effect of off­set­ting CO2 emis­sions from the atmosphere.