A new software package to help farmers assess and manage their sustainability and green credentials has launched.
The Sandy software, from Trinity AgTech, aims to help farmers accurately and independently assess the sustainability of their business and inform management decisions to aid the drive to reduce carbon emissions from the agricultural sector.
Trinity AgTech’s managing director for sustainability, Dr Alasdair Sykes, said the software has been developed by a team of more than 30 scientists and engineers with the aim of providing a range of easy-to-use tools to assess and manage farm sustainability.
These include tools for carrying out carbon footprint and biodiversity assessments, with the ability to look at different options for how to make environmental and profitability improvements at a farm, field and individual product level.
“We built Sandy to be an empowering tool,” said Dr Sykes.
“It’s there for farmers to enable them to meet industry challenges and it’s designed to put the initiative in the hands of the farmers.”
Trinity AgTech’s senior managing director, Richard Williamson, described Sandy as “the digital assistant” he’d been looking for throughout his farming career.
Mr Williamson said farmers were having to contend with unprecedented change in farm subsidies and customer preferences, as well as industry targets to reach net-zero.
He added: “Our industry is changing, and Sandy has come at a time when farmers are being forced to ask themselves how their business will evolve.
“Sandy is trusted and credible software, using the latest science and technology that helps farmers achieve new heights in environmental progress and financial prosperity while adding greater credibility to their traced provenance.”
Farmer support
The software is being trialled by award-winning farmer Jake Freestone, who manages Gloucestershire-based Overbury Enterprises.
He said: “It [Sandy] can pull into one place and make sense of the many data sources we have. It looks to provide clarity and precision through a range of tools that are remarkably easy to use.
“I hope Sandy will help direct us on our path to building local markets for food to with trusted provenance and opportunities to capitalise on emerging income streams.”
Trinity AgTech founder and executive chairman, Dr Hosein Khajeh-Hosseiny, said the company was working with supermarket chain Sainsbury’s on sustainability labelling for a number of its products.
He said: “Ultimately I really would like to be connect the consumer to the farmer. Sandy provides a complete profile of the provenance [of food] to the plate.”
Mr Williamson said an accurate way of assessing a farm’s sustainability and its full operations would help strengthen its provenance story and traceability.
He said: “Digitisation allows for the provenance of a farmer’s activity to be properly recognised in the market rather than being stolen by the intermediaries [in the supply chain].”
The software is available to farmers via an annual subscription fee, which starts at around £1,000. More details are online at www.trinityagtech.com