We reclaim land the water or the soil had written off.

VitaNova engineers, builds, and transfers the complete growing system that brings it back.

Talk to us

The problem

Salt-affected water has taken good land out of production across the United States.

WESTERN U.S. HIGH SALINITY RISK TEXAS INCREASING SALINITY PRESSURE LABELLE, FL FIELD SITE 26.8°N, 81.4°W

    Severity is an indicative classification of documented salt-affected and brackish-irrigation regions, not precise per-acre data. Sources: USDA; FAO 2024; USGS 2017; Bureau of Reclamation; Welle and Mauter 2017; Texas A&M AgriLife 2024.

    Brackish groundwater beneath the US holds 800x current annual use.

    Good climate is the hard part. Water and soil are engineering problems.

    Across the irrigated West, long growing seasons and abundant sun create the conditions for productive agriculture. In many places, the real limitation is not the climate - it is what sits beneath it.

    Where evaporation outpaces rainfall, irrigation can leave salts behind in the soil and concentrate them in the water. Over time, land that should be productive becomes increasingly difficult to farm.

    But those constraints can be measured and engineered around. Test the water. Understand the soil. Treat the source where necessary, or isolate the crop from unsuitable ground with a controlled root zone.

    The climate provides the opportunity. The system is designed to unlock it.

    The method

    How VitaNova does it, step by step.

    Find the written-off land01 Test the water and soil02 Fix the water or the soil03 Get most of it funded04 Grow a high-value crop05 Land back in production06

    Find the land nobody wants.

    Written-off ground, priced as if nothing will grow on it again. The first move is finding it and reading what it actually is.

    Test the water and the soil.

    A current water test and a look at the ground. Salt-affected water, poor soil, or both. This one reading decides everything downstream.

    Treat the water, bypass the soil, or both.

    If the waterReverse osmosis brings it down to about 0.75 mmhos/cm, then it is rebalanced crop-ready.

    If the soilThe crop grows in engineered containers, the root zone isolated from the native ground.

    A site can need either, or both.

    Get most of the build funded.

    Grants and district cost-share programs can cover 50 to 75% of the capital. The cost is not the reason to stop.

    Grow a high-value crop on it.

    The premium, salt-sensitive crop the land could not carry before, grown on treated water and sold into the window where domestic supply is thin.

    The land is back in production.

    Written-off ground back in profitable production, on the same acres, with the same water.

    Same land. Same water.

    What we do

    We take the site as we find it and hand back a system that fits it.

    The six steps of the method, offered as work. A site can need all of them or only some, and the reading in step two is what decides which.

    1. 01

      Find the land

      Written-off ground, priced as if nothing will grow on it again, and the case for whether it can.

    2. 02

      Test the water and soil

      A current water analysis and a reading of the ground. This one reading decides everything downstream.

    3. 03

      Treat the water, or bypass the soil

      Reverse osmosis down to about 0.75 mmhos/cm and rebalanced crop-ready, or an engineered root zone isolated from the native ground. Often both.

    4. 04

      Work out the funding

      Which of EQIP, Basin Salinity Control and WaterSMART a site qualifies for, and what each of them carries.

    5. 05

      Design the system for the site

      Treatment, rebalancing, fertigation, root zone, canopy, harvest and the control loop, specified together. The integration is the product.

    6. 06

      Prove it on the ground

      Everything above is running at Etherealberries, on land a laboratory declared unusable. It can be walked.

    Designed per site. Never sold as a fixed kit.

    Welcome to Etherealberries, our demonstration farm.

    The method proven at commercial scale on land a laboratory declared unusable. LaBelle, Florida.

    Visit etherealberries.com See it on the map

    Etherealberries, LaBelle, Florida. Visit the farm site

    A laboratory declared this farm's water unusable, and the crop is growing on it anyway.

    Source

    2.0 to 2.7

    mmhos/cm

    Treated

    0.75

    mmhos/cm

    99%

    of the fresh blueberries the US eats from January to mid-March are imported.

    About 66% imported across the full year.

    The treatment building under construction, roof going on with a crane on site.

    01

    The building goes up

    Steel down, roof going on. The shell that everything else arrives into.

    The reverse osmosis skid, rows of membrane pressure vessels on a steel frame.

    02

    Reverse osmosis

    The stage that brings the source water down to about 0.75 mmhos/cm.

    Filtration vessels and valves inside the treatment building.

    03

    Filtration

    Vessels and valves inside the building, between the source and the field.

    The finished treatment building with the water tank bank alongside it.

    04

    The building, finished

    The system housed, with the tank bank ranged along its side.

    Blueberry plants in engineered containers, standing on the sand.

    05

    The crop goes in

    Engineered containers on the sand, the root zone isolated from the native ground.

    Interactive system model
    in development

    Interactive system model in development

    The integration is the product, not any single component.

    • Water
      treatment

      Water treatment

      Salt out at the source. Reverse osmosis brings 2.0 to 2.7 down to 0.75 mmhos/cm.

    • Rebalancing

      Rebalancing

      Pure water made crop-ready, remineralized and acid-corrected to about pH 5.

    • Fertigation

      Precision fertigation

      Organic inputs dosed by recipe and verified at the root zone.

    • Root zone

      Engineered root zone

      The crop never touches the native soil. High-density air-pruning containers.

    • Canopy

      Adaptive canopy

      One folding structure against sun, heat, freeze and birds.

    • Harvest

      Contactless harvest

      Pulsed air detaches only the ripe fruit. No hand-picking, no bruising.

    • Control loop

      Sensor and control loop

      The layer that turns good components into one self-correcting system.

    Land

    42 acres

    Fee simple, 36 acres permitted.

    Water use permit

    SFWMD 26-113135-W

    Water analysis

    5-well independent lab

    Waters Agricultural Laboratories.

    Schedule

    Planting fall 2026

    First commercial harvest spring 2027.

    Faculty and staff from the UF/IFAS blueberry program have visited Etherealberries, walked the full system, and discussed it on site.

    Blueberry is the hardest test, not the limit.

    The same treated water, engineered root zone and control loop serve other high-value crops on salt-affected land, in the Rio Grande, the Colorado Basin, California and Florida.

    Strawberry

    Gross value per acre: to be supplied

    California

    Raspberry

    Gross value per acre: to be supplied

    Colorado Basin

    Blackberry

    Gross value per acre: to be supplied

    Rio Grande

    Avocado

    Gross value per acre: to be supplied

    Florida

    Designed per site, not sold as a fixed kit.

    Who we are

    They did not come from farming. They built a farm to find out what it takes.

    VitaNova AG Technologies was founded by Victoria and Dmitry Kucherov after more than two decades building businesses in other industries. Rather than buy a farm, they engineered a blueberry production system from the ground up, on land a laboratory had declared unusable.

    That farm is Etherealberries, and it is where VitaNova comes from. Every constraint the site imposed, every component that did not survive contact with it and every correction made along the way went into the method. The expensive part of this work is finding out which assumptions are wrong, and on this system that has already been paid for once.

    Which is what VitaNova is for. The farm was never the product. The product is the system behind it, engineered for a site rather than assembled from a catalogue, and built to be specified again on ground nobody has walked yet: a different basin, a different water, a different crop, the same seven layers and the same control loop. One farm proves it. The company exists to transfer it.

    Victoria Kucherova

    Victoria Kucherova

    Founder and CEO

    Leads strategy, research, partnerships and long-term vision.

    Dmitry Kucherov

    Dmitry Kucherov

    Operations

    Leads engineering, infrastructure, construction and daily farm operations.

    We were never trying to build another blueberry farm. We were trying to build a system that can be engineered once and handed to the next piece of land.

    Victoria and Dmitry Kucherov