Agrovista has strengthened its agronomy team in Scotland with the appointment of Dr Joe Crosby, who will look after farmer customers from Aberdeen to Fife.
Joe has a strong research background, which fits well with Agrovista’s ethos of recommending the most suitable products and delivering the best advice for any given situation to help deliver optimum margins for farmer customers.
Growing up on a dairy farm in Northamptonshire, Joe developed a range of practical skills early in life and worked as a harvest student on arable farms during his time at the University of York, where he gained a BSc in chemistry.
He followed that with an MSc in crop protection and agronomy at Harper Adams University, during which time he also worked in the crop trials department.
He then joined biostimulant specialist Plant Impact for four years, before returning to Harper Adams as a field trials officer, concurrently undertaking and completing a PhD researching Fusarium resistance in winter oats.
Joe then moved to UPL as a research agronomist, where he spent four years efficacy-testing pipeline products, notably foliar cereal fungicides and late blight products in potatoes.
He joined Agrovista in April this year and is now busy building up a customer base from his Perth home. “At first I wasn't sure about coming into commercial agronomy as I was a little bit worried it might be overly sales orientated, but I was reassured that Agrovista was about putting customers’ interests first and helping improve their bottom line,” says Joe.
“It’s a more social role than research, I enjoy chatting to farmers and getting a handle on their farms and methods. I’m looking forward to building long-term relationships and joining the community in Scotland.”
So far Joe has been concentrating on spring barley, potatoes and carrots, but is moving into winter cereals and oilseed rape as his area expands.
“I’m hoping carrots will be a significant part of my portfolio – it’s a challenging crop, we don’t have many plant protection products at our disposal, and we could lose a major herbicide, metribuzin, next year. The industry is working on replacements, so it will be interesting see what comes through in the short term.
“It’s also an interesting time for potatoes,” Joe adds. “We’ve had a season of broadly low blight pressure, which was gratefully received given that we had the first recorded instances of EU46 oxathiapiprolin-resistant blight in 2024.
“We have all been submitting what few outbreaks we have seen, but we won’t know the overall race composition of the UK population until FAB publish their results. So if we do get more disease pressure next year, it will be intriguing to see which races dominate and what that means for our chemistry choices.”
Regional sales manager Jan Vos welcomed Joe on board and wished him a successful career with Agrovista and within Scotland’s crop growing industry.
“Joe’s research background coupled with his practical outlook make him a valuable addition to the team as we look to help growers navigate their way to maximising crop yields, quality and returns.”