When Jack Keeys took up his role as global lead of the innovation hub at the International Fertilizer Association (IFA), he became the first person to hold such a position in the organisation’s history.
That fact alone says something about how the fertiliser sector is changing.
“This role didn’t exist two years ago,” Keeys tells AgNavigator. “It took 98 years for the industry to create an innovation programme.”
A 98-year-old industry embraces innovation
For an industry that provides the nutritional foundation for much of the world’s food production, innovation has often taken a back seat to reliability, scale and operational efficiency. According to Keeys, the priority has long been ensuring nutrient supply to a growing global population rather than fundamentally reinventing the system.
The fact his role was created is a sign the industry “really recognised that there’s a great opportunity for pre-competitive innovation and that perhaps it had fallen a little bit behind,” he says.
The result was the creation of the IFA Innovation Hub, designed to bring together fertiliser manufacturers, start-ups, researchers and technology developers around shared challenges such as emissions reduction, nutrient efficiency and food security.
While the initiative is still young, Keeys says there are already signs of progress.
“We’re seeing more joint ventures, more proof of concepts, more investments in start-ups, but it’s early days.”
The challenge: feeding the world while shrinking agriculture’s footprint
Ask fertiliser executives about their biggest priorities and the answer, according to Keeys, is rarely a single issue. Reducing emissions, improving nutrient-use efficiency, building resilience to climate and supply chain shocks, and ensuring food security. All matter and all are interconnected.
“At the top you have this tension point between feeding the world and doing that as sustainably as possible,” says Keeys. “They aren’t mutually exclusive, but they require careful consideration to deliver both.”
The pressure comes from multiple directions.
Governments are increasingly focused on emissions reduction. Farmers face growing scrutiny over nutrient losses and environmental performance. At the same time, climate change is introducing new risks through drought, heat stress and extreme weather events.
For fertiliser companies, innovation is increasingly viewed as the tool that can help address all of these challenges simultaneously.
The three innovation areas attracting the most attention
While many technologies are competing for attention, Keeys groups the most promising innovations into three broad categories: nutrient production, nutrient application and nutrient release.
Green nitrogen production
At the production stage, Keeys is particularly excited by emerging approaches to low-carbon nitrogen manufacturing.
“There are a lot of emerging technologies, particularly around green nitrogen production in its different forms,” he says.
Traditional nitrogen fertiliser production is highly energy intensive and closely linked to natural gas. New approaches based on technologies such as electrolysis and plasma-based nitrogen fixation could dramatically reduce the sector’s carbon footprint while also creating more decentralised production systems.
Companies such as PlasmaLeap, runner-up in the latest IFA innovation competition, illustrate the potential.
Beyond emissions reductions, decentralised production could reduce dependence on major production hubs and make nutrient supply more resilient during periods of geopolitical disruption.
Precision nutrient application
If lower-carbon production addresses one side of the equation, precision application tackles another major challenge: getting nutrients to the right place at the right time.
“The big challenge for the fertiliser industry and farming in general is that soil is a biological system,” says Keeys. “You can take 100 soil tests across a field and you still can’t really capture all of the variability in that field.”
Historically, understanding nutrient variability within fields has been difficult and expensive. But advances in digital agriculture are changing that.
Keeys points to a new generation of sensing technologies, satellites, drones, AI systems and computer vision tools that are beginning to map variability at unprecedented resolution.
The goal is better implementation of the 4Rs principle: applying the right nutrient source at the right rate, at the right time and in the right place.
“If you can properly map soils and fertilise based on those maps, digitally informed with these new AI and computer vision tools, that’s definitely increasing a lot,” he says.
The potential benefits include higher nutrient-use efficiency, lower losses, reduced environmental impact and improved farm profitability.
Controlled-release fertilisers and biologicals
The third innovation wave centres on what happens after nutrients reach the field.
Controlled-release fertilisers, biodegradable coatings and biological additives are attracting growing investment as the industry looks to improve nutrient uptake and reduce losses.
According to Keeys, biologicals represent one of the most exciting areas of development.
Why biologicals are moving into the mainstream
The IFA does not consider biologicals as competitors to conventional fertilisers, Keeys stresses.
“The industry in general and IFA is very supportive of biologicals and biologically derived fertiliser products,” he says.
The association views microbial products, biofertilisers and biostimulants as complementary technologies that work alongside traditional plant nutrition systems rather than replacing them entirely.
Keeys points to discussions with World Food Prize winner Dr Mariangela Hungria, whose pioneering work on biological nitrogen fixation helped transform Brazilian agriculture.
“She is very clear that this is a complementary thing. Biologicals work better when they come alongside proper plant nutrition.”
The attraction is clear. Biologicals offer potential gains in nutrient efficiency while also improving drought tolerance and helping crops cope with environmental stress.
“It’s a great opportunity because it means that you can provide proper nutrition and reduce emissions and improve crop resilience all in one package.”
Why no single technology will solve the problem
Asked which innovation will have the biggest impact over the next decade, his answer is simple: all of them.
“If you apply fertiliser in the most efficient way, but you’re still producing it in a way with emissions, you’ve only solved half the problem.”
Likewise, producing zero-carbon fertiliser means little if it is poorly applied and significant nutrient losses still occur.
The industry’s future, he argues, lies in integrating technologies rather than pursuing isolated breakthroughs.
“These different parts of fertiliser and plant growth and plant nutrition need to be tackled and considered together.”
The missing link: rewarding farmers
Keeys believes farmers are far more willing to innovate than they’re often given credit for.
In fact, he argues the innovation ecosystem has largely failed them.
“There hasn’t been enough interconnected innovation that is evidence based, affordable and implementable for farmers.”
One major obstacle is economics.
While many technologies can improve environmental performance, the financial incentives for adoption are often weak.
“Right now, there’s dozens of innovations that a farmer could use on their farm that could improve their environmental impact, but they would not get any recognition or reward for it.”
The solution, he believes, lies in better measurement of nutrient-use efficiency and mechanisms that recognise and reward adoption of sustainable practices.
What fertiliser giants really want from start-ups
Among start-up founders, there is often a perception that large companies view disruptive innovation as a threat.
Keeys says that is common misconception.
“The industry wants to disrupt themselves, not be disrupted.”
Rather than resisting change, many fertiliser companies are actively searching for technologies that can complement their existing businesses.
That includes investment, acquisitions, strategic partnerships and corporate venture capital programmes.
As sustainability pressures increase, start-ups are increasingly seen as a source of both new technologies and new thinking.
“The industry is engaging with these innovations because they’re finding the ones that are relevant for them, that they could acquire or partner with or invest in.”
One model that particularly impresses Keeys is New Zealand fertiliser cooperative Ravensdown’s Agnition Ventures platform. Rather than simply investing capital, Agnition provides start-ups with access to a network of farms where technologies can be trialled and validated in real-world conditions.
“It’s a really nice case study example of a large corporate really connecting with start-ups and meeting them where it’s most valuable for them.”
The fertiliser industry of 2035
Looking ahead, Keeys sees a sector that is simultaneously more digital, more biological and more sustainable.
“In 2035, we’ll see farmers getting better AI advisory informed from data that’s been captured in real time on their own farms,” he predicts.
The result, he says, will be lower-footprint fertiliser production, more targeted nutrient management and far tighter integration between biological and conventional crop nutrition products.
For an industry that spent nearly a century focused on optimising existing systems, that represents a profound shift.
“Farmers already have one of the most difficult jobs on the planet,” he says. “I’d say the industry has underserved farmers as opposed to farmers not taking up innovation.
“We’re looking at bringing this innovation ecosystem together so it can work a little bit more complementarily rather than each individual business trying to find its place.”
Further reading
The IFA recently published Fertilizer Innovation Unleashed: Catalyzing Transformative Action in Plant Nutrition, its flagship innovation and sustainability benchmarking report, examining how the industry plans to improve innovation performance, accelerate decarbonisation and support sustainable food production.
Join Jack Keeys at World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit 2026
Want to hear more about where fertiliser innovation is heading?
Jack Keeys will host a breakout session at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London on 23 September 2026, focused on the IFA Cultivate Challenge.
Attendees will learn how the IFA Innovation Hub is bringing together corporates, investors and entrepreneurs to accelerate promising plant nutrition innovations, helping transform innovative ideas into practical, scalable solutions that support the goal of feeding the world sustainably.
The session will also explore how start-ups are working with established fertiliser companies to tackle key challenges around emissions reduction, nutrient-use efficiency, climate resilience and food security.
