Through Soil Science, an Adventure in Kyrgyzstan

When Jonathan Cox was offered a work opportunity in Kyrgyzstan, he knew nothing about  the Central Asian country.  “I’d never even heard of Kyrgyzstan. I thought the person who sent the email misspelled Kazakhstan,” he laughs. But spending most of 2025 in Kyrgyzstan, Cox learned a great deal about the country’s people, culture, natural wonders, and — especially — its soil.

Cox (PhD, Chemistry, 2012) is a chemist and entrepreneur with a focus on the agriculture industry. He was hired to set up a soil-testing lab in Kyrgyzstan and jumped at the chance. Fortunately, his wife was on board for the adventure and was able to homeschool their five children, ages 13 to 3, during their stay in Central Asia.

“I’ve always wanted to work abroad and give my family the opportunity to experience a different culture,” says Cox. “I’d spent a while trying to make that happen.”

Cox marvels at how his career has unfolded. Growing up in Murray, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, he had little knowledge of or interest in the agriculture industry. He majored in chemistry and German at the University of Utah before coming to the Department of Chemistry in the UW College of Arts & Sciences for graduate studies in analytical chemistry, a field that “comes down to how you measure things and involves developing tools to better measure things.” Next came a postdoc in mass spectrometry — “a totally different field but still measuring things” — at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

After his postdoc, Cox wanted to work in private industry but wasn’t sure where. The answer came through his wife, Elisha (Allred) Cox, whom he met at the UW. Elisha (BA, Mathematics, Spanish, 2010) came from a farming family in Eastern Washington, which introduced Jonathan to the agriculture industry.

“I discovered that there’s this whole branch of soil science and industry of commercial testing labs measuring nutrients in soils to help with agriculture,” Cox says. Soil testing has huge implications for an agricultural operation’s bottom line, since amending the soil with the wrong nutrients, or with the correct nutrients in the wrong quantity, can lead to unnecessary fertilizer expense and a less successful harvest.

Cox joined a soil testing lab in Eastern Washington, and then bought a different lab, Kuo Testing Labs, when the owner was looking to sell. In five years, he grew the lab from 13 to almost 30 full-time employees. But in 2020, he was ready for a change. “Owning a business, you’re tied down to it, and I had other things I wanted to do,” he says.

Cox sold the lab and joined Double Diamond Fruit, a company in the tree fruit industry, while also helping to create The Soil Center, which turns agricultural waste from orchards, dairies, and other operations into organic soil amendments. When asked to be CEO of The Soil Center, he accepted with the caveat that he would serve in that role for just one year, so he could explore other opportunities that might arise.

Then the Kyrgyzstan project came along.

Cox had networked with European colleagues for several years in search of an opportunity to work on a project outside the US. He envisioned working in Europe, but when the Dutch nonprofit Dutch Nature sought someone to build a soil testing laboratory in Kyrgyzstan, Cox was intrigued. He and his family moved to Kyrgyzstan in March 2025 for the nine-month project.

Once on the ground in Kyrgyzstan, Cox had to adjust the scope of the project. The difficulty of acquiring the necessary materials, as well as Kyrgyz farmers’ lack of familiarity with soil testing, made a physical laboratory in a permanent location unrealistic. He pivoted to creating a mobile laboratory that could travel to the farmers.

The mobile lab uses a portable scanning device rather than the more sensitive technology originally planned. “As a laboratory chemist, I was really skeptical of the scanner at first because it’s not as accurate as a lab result,” Cox says. “But when I put that feeling aside and looked at the realities of Kyrgyzstan, it made sense. Unlike American farmers, who regularly test their soil, most Kyrgyz farmers had never heard of soil testing. So going from zero to two instead of zero to ten, we’re still able to make a huge difference.”

Another benefit: The mobile lab enabled more direct interaction with farmers on their land. Cox traveled with a Kyrgyz translator who was being trained to take over the project. “The goal was to build something sustainable that would outlive my time there,” Cox says. “That’s been the goal from day one, enabling locals to do that.”

Cox quickly learned that many farmers had overfertilized their land for years, depleting the soil. With the mobile testing lab, he was able to suggest fertilizer blends tailored to a farm’s specific soil conditions and crops. Cox thought the farmers might chafe at taking advice from an American, but instead they were eager for it.

Conversations with farmers led to another discovery: While compost is readily available to American farmers, it doesn’t exist in Kyrgyzstan, where animal manure — especially chicken manure — is discarded as a waste product.

“That’s black gold,” Cox says. “We can turn that into something incredibly useful.” Thanks to his Soil Center expertise, planning has begun for a compost operation in Kyrgyzstan.

In December 2025, Cox and his family returned to their home in Royal City, Washington, but he will continue as remote consultant for the projects he started in Kyrgyzstan, with occasional return visits likely. In January, he is traveling to India to assess whether similar projects might be replicated there, and he may take another exploratory trip to Africa this spring.

“When I got a doctorate in chemistry, I never thought I’d be working on soils in Kyrgyzstan,” Cox says. “But the guidance from faculty in the Chemistry Department provided a really good foundation to lead me on these paths. Analytical chemistry is how you measure things, and it’s been interesting to see how that concept has led me all the way around the world.”

Read more about Jonathan Cox’s Kyrgyzstan experience in his own words at his Substack blog.