A new supplier joins our platform; it is Nova Agro Spa, a company dedicated to the marketing of organic and sustainable products and whose mission is to make farmers aware of alternatives to the already known traditional fertilizers.
Nova Agro is about to turn one year old and although Tomás Vial Tagle, Founding Partner, started in the animal sector, he currently offers the market organic products that improve soils, providing beneficial microorganisms that improve their structure and microbiology.
“I started with animal feed and I realized that in the agricultural sector in the south and in the rest of Chile there was an increase in the price of all raw materials for animal nutrition. Given that, I began to wonder how I could help alleviate these high increases and costs in the industry. My idea was to be able to start researching and using all the byproducts or waste from raw materials to generate a good quality product and sell it to dairy farmers at cheaper prices, maintaining the production and quality of the milk. From then on, I spoke with a couple of suppliers and industries that were dedicated to the production of bran and raw materials and we developed tests and trials that turned out very well. After that, we began to sell these products to dairy farmers in the south.” explained Vial Tagle.
When fertilizer prices rose, he thought about replicating the model for agriculture, and that's how he came to work with organic and sustainable products.
“From January onwards, with the Russia-Ukraine war, fertilizer prices skyrocketed, reaching prices never seen before and that brought with it a very big problem for farmers. At that time I noticed that the fields were not being fertilized or were being fertilized less, which causes a severe agro-food problem, everything starts to become more expensive, you produce less, you have fewer products on the market, prices go up and in the end it is a very difficult chain to stop. So I asked myself the same question: What can I do? That is when I realized that urea can be replaced by compost and guano, obviously the quantities are different, but they can be replaced.” explains Tomás Vial Tagle.
His business idea came at the right time and many producers opted for these bio-solutions.
“The arrival was very good, in fact, there are other farmers who already use guano or compost, it is not unknown, it has been used for a long time, but here most of the older farmers used urea. Now there is a tendency to change to these organic products, since the traditional ones exceed the production costs that the farmer has. In the end, the farmers realized that these organic products were just as good and even better than the traditional ones, since they not only provide nitrogen, but also phosphorus and potassium and they are also a soil improver, because it has organic matter and other elements that are beneficial for the soil, urea is only nitrogen,” said the Founding Partner of Nova Agro.
They currently offer fertilizers, amendments and biofertilizers. Among them, for the production of cherries they have Organic Vegetable Compost, a 100% vegetal product, which allows natural fertilization with a high content of organic matter and beneficial microorganisms that renew the biological and regenerative properties of soils, increasing moisture retention, biodiversity, nutrient availability, in addition to providing humic and fulvic acids that stimulate plant development.
“It is made from plant remains from the agricultural industry, it has no guano, it is 100% organic; depending on the state of the field, for example, if you are just going to plant and you have soils that are not very nutritious, low in organic matter or soil that is not very porous and you want to plant cherry trees, before planting it would be good to apply this vegetable compost. Then. You can also have the plantation already established and do a maintenance application once a year, there you apply compost to improve the structure and microbiology of the soil, the absorption, the roots,” says the Founder of Nova Agro.
In addition, Nova Agro has composted chicken manure, an excellent quality product for fertilization, free of toxins to improve the microbiological quality of the soil with an excellent balance in its nutritional components and easy to apply.
Regarding the relevance of being on Smartcherry, Nova Agro highlighted the high presence of important brands on the platform and its reach: “It is a well-known, broad platform, where there are many other companies that are much larger than mine, more recognized, so being able to be there is already good, it gives you status and also because of the visits they have, which means that many farmers can see you. I also like the support to develop content that we will put together, podcasts, notes, that is why I chose Smartcherry, more than anything because it is a very friendly and well-known platform,” concluded Tomás Vial Tagle, Founding Partner of Nova Agro.
