Frontier Agriculture has partnered with Esri UK, the global leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, to improve the geospatial technology available to the agrifood chain through Frontier’s MyFarm digital platform.
The company says that providing a better understanding of location data across the entire lifecycle of food production will help address some of the key challenges facing UK farming. Growing Frontier’s digital capabilities for farmers and food production businesses will foster increased resilience and collaboration across supply chains, while allowing more proactive decision-making and risk management.
Using Esri UK technology will enable Frontier to connect the individual parts of the food production process, improving the transparency of supply chains to demonstrate where and how food is grown and deliver the benefits of a more geographic approach to its customer base of over 14,000.
Esri has over 50 years’ experience in supplying maps, apps and dashboards to manage and analyse spatial data. It UK customers include Defra, Vodafone, Aviva and The Wildlife Trusts. Frontier is now part of Esri’s global partnership network, a means of sharing knowledge and experience across industry to facilitate scalable GIS-based solutions. Frontiers’ end-to-end position in the agricultural industry is an opportunity for these ground-breaking digital solutions to be further developed for food production. The company can ensure technology developments grow with the needs of farms and food production systems, while taking account of changing agricultural trends, climate change, new policy, research initiatives and industry advancements.
“Joining forces with Esri UK will help us move geospatial technology front and centre of the UK agriculture industry,” comments Frontier’s head of digital solutions Tom Parker. “As the first partnership of its type in this sector, we want to help growers and wider supply chains use the power of location intelligence to better understand the challenges and opportunities within food production.
“With agricultural policy and increasing sustainability measures bringing more focus to food production and landscape-wide environmental management, digital farm tools are becoming increasingly important, and this partnership underpins that,” Mr Parker continues.
“More than ever before there’s a requirement on farmers and food processors to demonstrate the journey of food production. This can be the difference between meeting the criteria of an action within the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) or demonstrating a reduction in Scope 3 emissions within a supply chain.”
“For truly sustainable food production systems though, the right digital tools can also help growers make timely interventions or adaptations. In a practical sense this may be using biomass imagery to determine the requirement for a plant growth regulator, but in broader terms it could mean identifying risks to production, managing natural capital more effectively and even improving farm health and safety.
“In the same way growers can monitor crop deficiencies via mapping and take appropriate actions today, advanced spatial technology could provide more detailed business information such as the proximity in which food is grown and produced alongside a wild bird conservation area, or the temperature and condition of a grain store.”
Mr Parker acknowledges that geospatial technology is not new to farming but notes that Tom notes that its main use to date has been for practical crop production mapping activities, such as recording field operations, producing precision farming plans, targeting fertiliser programmes or recording environmental features.
“These activities remain key, but they only reflect what is going on in the field and often need managing through a myriad of different tools,” he states. “When we talk about crop production at Frontier, we always stress the importance of a holistic approach and that’s true for business management too.
“As an industry leader, Esri UK’s expertise will bring transformational benefits to farmers and food producers as they look for more collaboration across their supply chains.
“It’s an exciting time and we’re looking forward to the first phase of development to our existing MyFarm mapping technology. From there, Esri UK’s innovations will help us to continually expand our digital solutions,” Mr Parker concludes.
Jules Cullen, head of business development for Esri UK, adds: “Combining Frontier’s market-leading agricultural knowledge with Esri UK’s geospatial expertise will allow UK farmers to unlock the full potential of taking a geographic approach to running their businesses. GIS answers the question of ‘where?’ and while adopting a geospatial strategy is already a priority for many industries, Frontier’s move sets a new standard in UK food production.”