- Frontier brings the power of location intelligence to farming industry with new Esri UK partnership
Frontier Agriculture has partnered with global leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, Esri UK, to support the UK farming and food production industry with improved geospatial technology capabilities.
By providing a better understanding of location data across the entire lifecycle of food production, the collaboration aims to tackle some of the key challenges facing UK farming, providing more sophisticated technology through Frontier’s MyFarm platform.
“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.”
The move comes as Frontier looks to grow the digital capabilities it provides to farmers and food production businesses, fostering increased resilience and collaboration across supply chains and providing more proactive decision-making and risk management solutions.
Speaking of the development, head of digital solutions, Tom Parker says: “Joining forces with Esri UK will help us move geospatial technology front and centre of the UK agriculture industry.
“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.”
Location serves as a powerful unifier for disparate datasets to help find new value in data, and farming is a natural fit for GIS. Using Esri UK’s technology, Frontier will develop solutions 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 delivering the benefits of a more geographic approach to its 14,000+ customer base.
Tom continues: “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.
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.”
“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.”
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.
Tom adds: “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.”
Related news:
