“Soil health is not an abstract sustainability goal,” says Hunter Swisher. “It’s a systemic strategy to produce what the world needs with the resources we have.”
In other words, it’s about working with what nature already provides to produce food, rather than relying on an endless supply of synthetic inputs to get the job done.
Swisher’s company, Phospholutionsdoes this through its RhizoSorb product, which it calls “the next generation of fertilizer.” Dry phosphate fertilizer, it was developed to improve the efficiency of phosphate use in plants, which is essential for crop yields. Unlike conventional fertilizers, RhizoSorb also minimizes the amount of waste (e.g. runoff) that could harm the environment.
Phospholutions’ mission fits into a key theme of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: “building prosperity within planetary boundaries.”
Also on the Davos agenda this week: AI, which is expected to appear in almost every scheduled session, including those related to agtech.
Swisher, who will be attending a conference this week in Davos, took the time to chat with AgFunderNews on agriculture within planetary boundaries and the role of AI in global agriculture.
AgFunderNews (APN): “Building prosperity within planetary boundaries” is a big part of the Davos agenda this year. How does paying attention to soil health contribute to this?
Swisher Hunter (HS): Soil health plays a critical role in how we operate within planetary boundaries because it determines how efficiently inputs are transformed into food.
Agriculture has already made enormous progress in producing more with less. We can build on this knowledge by better understanding how soils work and, specifically, how well they make nutrients and water available to crops.
When soil function is strong, crops are more resilient and inputs are used more efficiently. Otherwise, losses increase and pressure arises elsewhere, from wasted fertilizer to downstream environmental impacts.
The efficiency of the use of phosphorus illustrates this well. This is essential for yield, but soil chemistry often limits the plant’s access throughout the growing season. Improving this interaction allows farmers to derive more value from what they apply, reducing waste while protecting performance.
This is why soil health is not an abstract sustainability goal. It’s a systemic strategy to produce what the world needs with the resources we have – and that’s what my team and I are focused on: strengthening nutrient dynamics in the soil so that productivity, economics and environmental limits move in the same direction.
APN: Which technologies in this area excite you the most in this area?
HS: Those that generate clear gains for both farmers and natural resource systems.
There is a sweet spot where economics, efficiency, and environmental impact align, and that’s where true adoption and scale happens.
The advances that matter today address the problems farmers face and improve the functioning of their operations without major changes: increasing nutrient availability, strengthening root-soil interactions, reducing losses, for example. This generates value on both sides of the equation: better margins and less environmental pressure.
When efficiency improvements also improve profitability, sustainability ceases to be a trade-off and becomes an integral part of the operational infrastructure.
This is the category we focus on at Phospholutions: bringing innovation to under-addressed parts of the system where small functional gains create outsized impact.
APN: What excites you most (or concerns you) when it comes to AI in agriculture?
HS: I’m excited about AI’s ability to move agriculture from hypothesis-driven to outcome-driven decisions.
For a long time, many decisions in agriculture have been shaped by tradition, averages or risk avoidance. AI creates the ability to make decisions based on verified performance across time and space.
What concerns me is that AI is treated as a shortcut rather than a discipline. If it adds complexity, obscures accountability, or moves decision-making away from ground reality, it will fail, no matter how advanced the model.
In agriculture, AI only gains its place when it is explainable, reliable and directly linked to the outcomes that interest farmers. The most impactful AI won’t seem revolutionary. It will seem reliable.
APN: “The spirit of dialogue” is a major theme at Davos this year. What might this look like in the world of agtech?
HS: In agtech, a true spirit of dialogue means collaborating so that we can move beyond siled rhetoric and align on delivering results.
It seems that farmers, input suppliers, technology companies, food companies and policy makers are asking a simple question: “What actually works and how can we responsibly scale it?”
We’ve seen this in action at Phospholutions, where our business model is based on partnerships throughout the value chain. Phosphate manufacturers are looking for ways to improve efficiency and exploit more of the mineral resources the food system depends on. Agricultural retailers are looking for ways to add more value through product differentiation that drives profitability for farmers. Farmers are looking for ways to improve their bottom line through greater efficiency of inputs such as fertilizers. Our partners across the value chain are thoughtfully engaging to integrate technologies like RhizoSorb into the dialogue about the future of agriculture.
Dialogue also means listening differently. Farmers don’t need to be convinced that change is coming. They already go through it every season. What they need are solutions that respect their risks, protect their returns and adapt to real-world operations.
When conversations move away from ideology and toward measurable performance, including effectiveness, resilience, and stability, progress accelerates. This is how agtech moves from experimentation to impact.
APN: What is the big idea you want people to understand about agriculture today?
HS: The future of agriculture is not about adding more, but about losing less.
Protecting yield, building on the progress farmers have already made and reducing waste: this is how efficiency, profitability and sustainability advance together.
This has been a driving force behind our work at Phospholutions, as we improve the world’s use of phosphorus by helping more of what is applied become productive. And it’s a perspective that applies far beyond our business, as the industry looks for practical ways to produce what the world needs within real-world constraints.
