Our Story
Our Story
Starting with the motivation and vision to make nutrient testing mainstream and available to everyone anywhere in the world.
Fact-based information and soil management shouldn’t be exclusively available to farmers that can afford it and have the privilege of infrastructure and access to testing facilities.
Nutrient testing should come to farmers, all around the globe!
So the vision of AgroCares Founder and CEO Henri Hekman, who was initially leading known wet chemistry Laboratories.
With that idea in mind AgroCares AgTech company was established in 2013 in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Originally starting under the name SoilCares with the most complex, but also yield determining part: to analyse soil nutrition on the spot and ultimately set the focus on soil fertility.
Starting with the motivation and vision to make nutrient testing mainstream and available to everyone anywhere in the world.
Fact-based information and soil management shouldn’t be exclusively available to farmers that can afford it and have the privilege of infrastructure and access to testing facilities.
Nutrient testing should come to farmers, all around the globe!
So the vision of AgroCares Founder and CEO Henri Hekman, who was initially leading known wet chemistry Laboratories.
With that idea in mind AgroCares AgTech company was established in 2013 in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Originally starting under the name SoilCares with the most complex, but also yield determining part: to analyse soil nutrition on the spot and ultimately set the focus on soil fertility.
Why start with soil? As it is a majorly complex system.
Soil is one of the world's most essential resources and among the most crucial factors of the natural environment that the global food production relies on. As a result, agriculture has a leading part in land use and maintaining or restoring a healthy soil life.
Good soil fertility determines whether enough food will be available to feed the growing world population. However, soil health doesn’t change overnight, hence it is especially important to monitor early on the status of the soil and adapt to sustainable management practices that guarantee a healthy soil life over time. Healthy soil will produce higher yields and stabilize yields by making crops and soils more resilient to climate change impact and store more carbon. In other words secure the livelihoods of the roughly 2 billion people that rely on agriculture as their main livelihood.
With this mindset AgroCares started as part of a project its first operations in Kenya in 2013. At that time revolutionizing soil testing in Africa, the first roll out of the Lab-in-a-Box happened on the back of a truck with the fusion of two different sensors Xrf and Alpha and practical soil processing equipment moving around the country to bring soil testing to the farmers Shamba (Farm). Soil testing should not only become available to everyone but it should be simple, practical, easy to operate and most of all fast.
As contrast to the often complicated, slow and delicate procedures in commercial wet chemistry Laboratories.
Though the Lab-in-a-Box was a fantastic alternative to wet chemistry analysis, the ambition of AgroCares became to make soil analysis even easier with a Handheld device that could be carried directly to the field and allowed continuous monitoring throughout the growing cycle. Which lead to the launch of the NIR Scanner in 2015/2016. Since then AgroCares build a soil database with 20.000 + samples and developed together with strategic Partner Trouw Nutrition feed analysis solutions on a global scale. As a result AgroCares operates today in 30+ countries and is delivering nutrient testing to countless farmers worldwide.
Soil analysis was just the beginning. The major milestones of realizing feed and leaf nutrient analysis with the same NIR Scanner lead eventually to the new and current name AgroCares in 2018.
AgroCares clients and partners range from organization working with smallholder farmers across Africa, fertilizer producers in Canada, data service providers in South East Asia, governmental organization in central Asia and private entities in Europe among many others.
With AgroCares diverse client portfolio and the close relationships, interaction and cooperation with our customers we learn on daily basis about the complexity, diversity and difficult decision that farmers, advisors and entire value chains have to make when it comes to farming. Agriculture is highly dependent on the local context and we realized that our solution can be only of value if we adapt to the local needs. AgroCares ambition and motivation is to provide a full solution through flexible and customized app design and Hardware that analysis all farm relevant materials to provide the Farmers and Advisors with efficient and relevant information about their soil, crops and feed materials.
