5th December 2024
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.
Frontier’s partnership with Esri brings advanced geospatial technology to UK agriculture
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 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.”
What is the value of location intelligence?
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.”
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.”
Improved location intelligence will allow MyFarm users to take a more geographic approach
Market-leading technology for agriculture
Established over 50 years ago, Esri provides powerful maps, apps and dashboards to manage and analyse spatial data, with its UK customers including Defra, Vodafone, Aviva and The Wildlife Trusts. With Frontiers’ unique end-to-end position in the agricultural industry, the partnership is an opportunity for these ground-breaking digital solutions to be further developed for food production.
And though geospatial technology is not entirely new to farming, 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. 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.”
Jules Cullen, head of business development for Esri UK shares the same sentiment.
“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.”
The Esri UK Partner Network
Frontier is now part of Esri’s global partnership network. Comprising organisations from around the world, the network is a means of sharing knowledge and experience across-industry to facilitate scalable GIS-based solutions. In Frontier’s case this means ensuring developments always grow with the needs of farms and food production systems, accounting for things like changing agricultural trends, climate change, new policy, research initiatives and industry advancements.
Tom concludes: “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.”
