This is the register. Every row is an intervention VAN actually makes, the mechanism it works through, and the evidence behind it. A row without a mechanism and an evidence status does not go on the page.
Pakistan is not under-fertilised. It applies 156 kg of nutrient per hectare of cropland, above the world average of 117 and above the United States at 108. What that nutrient consists of is the problem: 78.5% nitrogen, 20.5% phosphate, 0.94% potash. About a quarter of the nitrogen applied is taken up by a crop. The United States converts roughly 72% of its own.
A soil worked that way loses in one direction and is loaded in another. Potassium and the micronutrients leave with every harvest and are not put back; nitrogen goes on season after season into ground that cannot hold it. Across much of the cropped area organic carbon sits under 1%, so there is little left to hold a cation or a molecule of water. Yield per kilogram of nutrient has fallen while the kilograms have not.
None of that is answered by a sentence about caring for the soil, and none of it is answered by selling more of the same bag. What follows is what VAN does instead. Sources for every figure above are on Why Pakistan must shift.
| What we do | How it works on the soil | Where it shows up | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| We coat urea granules with sulfur. | The coating slows nitrogen release from days to weeks. Where soil sulfur-oxidising bacteria are active, oxidising that sulfur releases acid into the few centimetres around each granule, and phosphorus and zinc held by alkalinity can come back into solution there. A microsite effect, not a field one. | Vital Urea (SCU) | PATENT 144684 LOSS-REDUCTION FIGURE TO VERIFY |
| We granulate phosphate inside an acidic microenvironment and seal it with humic. | Pakistani soils run above pH 8 and fix 70–80% of applied phosphate. The acidic microenvironment and the humic seal slow that fixation reaction at the granule surface, so more of the applied P stays available. | Green Phosphate | COA |
| We supply potassium humate as pellets and as liquid. | Humate raises the soil's cation exchange capacity and chelates cations, so applied nutrients are held on the exchange sites instead of leaching or precipitating. | Humi Grow · Vibrant | COA |
| We manufacture compost from plant residue. | Plant residue only, screened free of contamination and pathogens before it goes in. Returns organic matter to soils that sit under 1% organic carbon — the input side of the deficit, applied as a measured product rather than as raw manure. | V-Compost | COA |
| We recover potassium from bio-fuel plant fly ash and run it through our own plant. | Puts back the mineral fraction that left the field when the residue was cut for fuel, instead of importing mined potash for the same acre. Every recovered tonne replaces a bought-in tonne. Roughly one tonne of potash comes out of ten tonnes of ash. | ~20% of VAN's potash intake · 3,000 t ash processed · 500 t/yr line for 2027 | IN PRODUCTION |
| We are completing the route that recovers silicon from the same ash. | Husk and straw carry heavy silicon loads that leave with the residue. Recovering it returns the element to the soil rather than sending it to an ash dump. Target form not fixed yet — soluble silicate and amorphous silica behave differently in an alkaline soil, so we do not name one. | R&D — final stage, not in any product | FINAL R&D |
| We publish a dose and a growth stage for 28 crops. | An application rate tied to the crop's uptake stage is the mechanism by which over-application stops. A nutrient plan is the difference between feeding the crop and loading the soil. | 28 crop nutrition plans | PUBLISHED |
| We design against soil data, not against a national average. | Roughly 770,000 soil records across Punjab, 18,000 across Sindh and 600 in Gilgit-Baltistan sit behind VAN's formulation decisions. VAN did not collect that data and does not claim it. It comes from the provincial soil survey work and from VAN's own sampling, and VAN reads it. A grade chosen against a district's measured deficiency is a different product from a grade chosen against a national mean, and soil data is where VAN's product design starts. | Every VAN grade and coating decision | PROVINCIAL SOIL SURVEY + VAN SAMPLING |
| We coat the same granule differently depending on where it is going. | The phosphate granule sent to Kamalia carries an iron coat. The same granule going to Lodhran carries boron. The deficiency is local, so the correction is local — one base material, one coating line, and the micronutrient chosen against the soil the bag will actually be opened on. | Coated phosphate grades | IN PRODUCTION |
| We set micronutrient need from the crop and the climate, not from the price list. | What a crop is short of depends on what its soil holds, what that crop removes and the season it grows in. Deciding the micronutrient from those three is the mechanism that stops one being applied where it was never missing — which is both a cost to the grower and a load on the soil. | Formulation and recommendation | IN USE |
| We put a soil app in the grower's hands. | It reads what his soil holds, sets that against what his crop removes, and returns what to supply, by which route, at which stage. A rate without a stage is a guess. This is how the plan reaches the person who applies it instead of staying with the people who wrote it. | VAN soil app | IN USE |
| We measure N, P₂O₅ and K₂O in our own accredited laboratory. | A guaranteed analysis a grower can rely on is what makes a rate recommendation meaningful. Unverified analysis makes every downstream soil calculation wrong. | All 23 registered products | PNAC LAB 336 |
Read together, the soil-data, coating, micronutrient and app rows are one discipline: the right material, at the right rate, at the right stage, on the right field. VAN does not badge that. It is what a plan looks like when the soil decides the product rather than the other way round.
Rows are added to this register when the action exists and the evidence exists — not when the intention exists.
1. Is there a verb we own? "We coat", "we granulate", "we recover", "we measure" — not "we are
committed to", "we believe in", "we strive for".
2. Is there a mechanism? The sentence must say how the action changes the soil, in terms a
soil scientist could argue with.
3. Is there an evidence status? Lab result, COA, patent, published plan, or the stage it is at — "pilot", "to verify". Every sentence on these pages carries one.
