Soil · nutrient density · human health
We believe farm produce should be valued for nutrition.
The nutritional variation of farm produce is not well understood, yet the overwhelming global scientific evidence now demonstrates that how our food is farmed can change its nutritional content.
Vitagri has been created by farmers, for farmers, with the clear goal of identifying nutrient differences across all major food categories. Its mission is also to ensure farmers benefit when positive agricultural practices are linked with improved food nutrition. When integrated with sustainable farming methods, these nutritional improvements support a combined farming and nutrient-rich food system. We call this true Nutrient Density.
Diet-related ill health costs the UK an estimated £268 billion a year. Nobody currently measures whether the food behind that figure is getting better or worse.
The market failure
It has never accounted for nutritional variation based on farming system.
Compositional data dating back decades show that, in many cases, the mineral and vitamin content of UK staple foods has fallen measurably since the mid-twentieth century. Iron, zinc, magnesium and copper — the nutrients behind immune function, cognition and long-term disease risk — are lower than they were.
Why? Soil degradation, varieties selected for yield, farm produce built around speed rather than biological complexity.
Crops are often sold as the same, despite the fact that they are grown in different conditions, countries and techniques — all of these can differ substantially in what they actually contain nutritionally.
The science is clear: along with genetics, soil biology is the single most influential factor in improving the nutritional density of our food.
Yet farmers investing in soil health are not separately rewarded for the nutritional benefits they provide to the food industry.
Vitagri wants to change this for good.
How we work
Vitagri is agnostic to farming certification systems.
Regenerative, organic, conventional. These are important descriptions used to define types of farming practices, and it is not for Vitagri to promote or criticise any of these methods.
Vitagri's role is to measure and link farming systems to nutritional outcomes in our food. We focus on evidence of these outcomes, which is why we remain neutral and do not take sides. We are committed to maintaining our independence and staying true to the facts, guided solely by this evidence.
Vitagri's core role is to help fix and enhance the farming system from a nutritional perspective, accelerating system change to ensure that the farming industry comprehensively understands and acts on the fundamental role of nutrition in how our food is produced.
Created by farmers, for farmers, meaning farmers trust Vitagri to provide a safe place to store and represent their farm data. Vitagri learns, informs, and supports the ongoing work needed to ensure sustainable farming practices are linked to nutritional outcomes.
The evidence base
What is the global evidence?
Before Vitagri built anything commercial, it built Pulse Brain: a curated, tiered catalogue connecting global research into farming practices, soil biology, crop and animal production, nutrient density, diet, and human health.
Six fields that are usually studied separately are now, uniquely as a result of Pulse Brain, held here as one accessible evidence layer — because human health has to be attributed to soil, and Vitagri's role is to help assess this evidence to make sure the best decisions are being made to ensure this connection is maintained.
This catalogue holds +19,000 scientific records, reviewed and added to every week, drawn from the core global research publication sites. Every record is graded, enriched with a plain-language summary and extracted claims, and checked for retraction and duplication before it is added to the live resource.
The Growing Health Report, funded by the Frank Parkinson Agricultural Trust, synthesises +3,000 peer-reviewed studies to set out what that evidence currently supports — and, as importantly, where it does not yet reach.
We work with Dan Kittredge and the Bionutrient Institute, whose farm nutritional data programme is the most advanced in the world at reading nutrient variation directly from food relating to farming practices.
“We, at the Bionutrient Institute, are delighted to be working with Vitagri to accelerate the measurement of how farming can increase nutritional density.”
The platform
Three ways to put the evidence to work today.
None of this waits for the framework to be finished. Pulse AI to interrogate the evidence. Pulse Workshop to score your products. Pulse Check to test a single claim.
Pulse AI
Ask any nutrient-density question and get a straight answer in seconds, grounded in the catalogue and graded for strength. Free to use, and the fastest way to meet Pulse.
Pulse Workshop
The year-round platform where your team scores, verifies and benchmarks nutrient density across products, ingredients and farms. A place you work in, not a training day you attend.
Pulse Check
One-off verification of a single nutrient-density claim, no subscription. Submit the claim and get an evidence-graded verdict — Supported, Investigate, Critical or Evolution — typically inside fifteen minutes. First report free with a work email matching your company website.
In development · recruiting founding trial sites
If nutrition can be predicted from practice, it can be read back from the food.
The Bi-Directional Predictive Model is Vitagri's research flagship. It is a programme, not yet a service.
It tests the relation at the centre of everything above, in both directions. A forward model estimates a food's nutrient density from how it was farmed. A reverse model reads the food's own biology to test how it was grown. Run as an optimiser, the same model points to the practice changes most likely to lift density on a particular farm. Predict, verify, improve — three dimensions, one relation. We call it 3D farming.
If the relation holds in both directions, nutritional quality becomes something that can be stated, checked and priced. That is what the trials are for. It is at the stage where it needs fields.
Practice → density
Estimate nutrient density from farming systems.
Biology → practice
Read the food's biology to test how it was grown.
Search → field trial
Surface the next practice change most likely to lift density.
Where you come in
Find the sentence that sounds like you.
“You sell food you believe is better than the label can prove.”
Food manufacturers and brands — score and benchmark the nutrient density of products and ingredients, and build the commercial case for better inputs.
“You want to know what is actually on your shelves.”
Retailers — see how your range scores, and trace each score back through the supply chain to the farm.
“Your members are being judged against a standard nobody agreed.”
Trade associations — give your members an independent, evidence-graded measure of nutrient density. One standard across the sector.
“You farm for quality and get paid for quantity.”
Farmers and growers — nutrient density is made in your fields. Host a founding 3D farming trial site and help build the model that predicts and verifies it.
“The people you advise are tired of being sold certainty.”
Advisers and groups — run Pulse with the farmers and food businesses you work with. Shared workspaces, group evidence feeds and adviser tools.
“You need to know what the evidence does and does not support.”
Research and policy — 19,000+ tier-graded records, UK-contextualised. Free to browse.
Partnerships in progress
In conversation with the organisations that move the UK food system.
We are in active partnership conversations with national retailers, food manufacturers, farming and food trade associations, and research and policy bodies. We name partners only once agreements are signed. Names can be shared under NDA on request.
Two minutes a week
The week's evidence, tier-graded.
What arrived in the literature this week, what it appears to show, and how strong it is. Curated by the Vitagri team, auto-ingested from PubMed, Crossref, OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar. Free.
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