We help Farm Advisors improve soil health with independent data driven software
Easily create soil management strategies that drive profitable,
sustainable farming
Designed for independent farm advisors
Independent, always
We're completely independent, offering unbiased, data-driven tools without trying to push specific products or inputs.
Adapting to meet your needs
With the agility of a start-up at our core, we rapidly adapt our platforms to suit your needs. You can even have a bespoke white-labelled version.
Leveraging soil science expertise
With our co-founder Ben's background as a soil scientist, our platform reflects a depth of understanding that unearths hidden value to help you manage your soils
Your data, no ifs or buts
We share your passion for improving soil health and respect your data privacy. We're not here to 'nick' your data, but to contribute to healthier soil, just like you.
Better decisions,
less faff
Make a Soil Management Plan in 2 minutes
Need a Soil Management Plan for SFI23? Don't want to write it out field by field? All you need is an SBI number. It's completely free to add your farm to the platform.
All your field boundaries already drawn
We use your SBI number to automatically extract all the Arable and Permanent Grassland field boundaries (those eligible for SFI23 SAM1 payments).
No cross-referencing MAGIC maps required
We use these boundaries to automatically assess the risks from run-off, soil type, nearby watercourses, boreholes, and a whole range of sensitive areas from NVZs to SSSIs.
Suggested management actions pre-loaded
Based on the combination of risks identified, we suggest relevant management actions to meet DEFRA's requirements. You can add or delete actions as you see fit.
Generate a compliant report ready for the RPA
All of the risk maps and suggested management actions are collected into a professional PDF report to get you through an RPA inspection. Pay per SBI number for the full report.
Independent
All insights are simply guided by
by the data.
Privacy first
All information is anonymised and stored on secure servers, with password protection.
Affordable
It's completely free to get started on the platform; we then charge for the full Soil Management Plan.
Easy to use
Intuitive interfaces which you can get used to in no time.
Try it for yourself!
Get started in 30 seconds
Create your account
Sign up with just an email address.
Find your farm
Use your SBI number to import field boundaries.
Get your data
Link your field boundaries to soil maps, run-off risk, erosion risk, and proximity to waterways and sensitive areas.
John Snow
Farm Hand, Winterfell
Rooted in Agriculture,
Grounded in Science
Our co-founders, Tom and Ben, first met through the British Society of Soil Science. They are both soil and data nerds, who are as passionate about improving soil health as our customers.
We love working with and learning from farmers and agronomists - the original soil gurus. We see our role as helping customers to better use available data and share knowledge with each other.
While we're proud that farmers and agronomists have trusted us with data from more than 115,000 acres, we are still a small, adaptable team and our platform is built around what our customers ask us to develop.
Tom and Ben came together in early 2022 to start Soil Benchmark. But our story goes back much further.
Tom had grown up on a small farm in North Yorkshire, and was working for a company selling bio-fertilisers to farmers. Soil samples were taken and farm data collected. But the main purpose was selling inputs to those farmers - after that the data was largely left to gather dust. The questions farmers were always asking Tom, though, were not about which inputs to buy, but 'what should I be doing to look after my soils better?' or 'what are the other farmers you work with doing?'.
At the same time Ben was a Digital Soil Scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, building algorithms and web applications to analyse large collections of soil data and also surveying soils across Scotland. He had a passion for the role of sustainable soil management in overcoming the great environmental challenges of our time, and wanted to use his skills to help turn around the long term declines in soil health in agriculture.
Tom and Ben decided to start Soil Benchmark to achieve this vision. The core ambition that drove them was to harness the huge amount of underutilised data from farms and Government Organisations to shape a future where healthy soils support profitable farms delivering nutritious food, clean rivers, thriving wildlife, and carbon removal.
We've come a long way since Tom and Ben launched Soil Benchmark with that simple idea. Farmers and advisors use our platform to support soil health on more than 115,000 acres of UK farmland. We've been backed by DEFRA, Ordnance Survey, the European Space Agency, independent agronomists and far-sighted investors who support us on this journey.
And we've welcomed Henry onto the team, adding a whole load of development experience and a knack of picking up new skills frighteningly quickly.
But we are just getting started. We still think it's crazy how much environmental data sits siloed on farms or is not utilised to help inform sustainable soil management. So we're on a mission to make this data work for farmers' soils. Join us.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Still got questions? Email tom@soilbenchmark.com or book a call with us via Calendly.
It's super quick:
- Create an account - no card details required, just add your email and accept the T&Cs.
- Add an SBI number so we can extract your field boundaries.
- Sit back and relax whilst the relevant soil and environmental data for your fields is scraped from our database.
To pre-populate an SFI23 compliant Soil Management Plan, we only require an SBI number .
To unlock benchmarking and more advanced analytical features, you can add any of the following farm data (which will be held anonymously on our secure servers):
- soil samples
- cropping histories
- yield records
- tillage records
- input applications
- livestock movements
Yes! Please book a call to arrange a 30 minute demo.
Not yet, no.
The background data we use to drive many of our tools is currently restricted to England.
If you are a farmer or agronomist outside of England and are interested in using our tools, please book a call and we can discuss expanding our coverage to your location.
Yes, we are clear that it's your data, and you are free to take it from the platform whenever you wish.
This is reflected in our T&Cs which you can read here.
The easiest way is to export data from an existing farm management software. We can work with exports from all common platforms.
We also have tools to digitise paper and pdf documents - simply take a photo of an old soil sample, upload it via our Dropbox style link, and we will digitise it for you, for free!
Its completely free to start using Soil Benchmark.
Without paying a penny you can add as many SBIs as you like, and see risk maps, soil maps, details of waterways and sensitive areas, as well as viewing and editing suggested management actions.
We charge customers per SBI to download the full Soil Management Plan (which, through the SFI23 SAM1 action will earn a farmer £5.80 / ha, plus an additional £95. That's £675 for a 100ha farm). You only pay when you are ready, and you can choose to convert any number of the SBIs you have loaded onto the system.
We offer a bespoke package for agronomy companies and large farms wanting a 'white-labelled' bespoke version of the reports, with additional features developed for their needs. Please book a call if you would like to discuss this option.
Learn about your soil
Your team can be up and running in 30 minutes or less.
Our platform brings together disparate soil sample and soil management information to allow you to see clearly, in one place, the history of your fields and how they’ve been managed.
From soil samples, to cropping histories, to the tillage practices you’ve used – we can add any information that you want to compare.
Plus we will digitise and map any paper information you upload - for free!
Our tools automatically calculate and complete details such as run-off or erosion risk, saving you time and effort. Use historic data stored on the platform to fill out other sections quickly and accurately, without having to go digging in old files or emails.
Spend less time stuck behind a screen, and more where you want to be.
By contributing your information to the platform, you unlock insights from our a growing pool of other farmers, already covering more than 115,000 acres. Learn from what has worked on comparable farms, and add your insights to help other farmers improve the health of their soils.
See for each of your fields what practices have improved soil health and farm performance on comparable fields in our database. We combine data from soil type and topography to climate and farm history to find the most relevant comparisons for you to learn from.
All our benchmarking tools work on the same principle – the more information you contribute to the platform, the more you will be able to access from other farmers and advisors.
Use our platform to extract data for each field on:
- Topography: helping you calculate run-off and erosion risk, based on the Environment Agency's newly released LIDAR data
- Geology: use layers from our partners at the British Geological Survey, cropped to your fields, including estimated soil depth and soil texture
- Soil Maps: Access the soil series data for each field from national soil maps held at Cranfield University and the James Hutton Institute
Working with our partners at the Met Office, use our platform to see the climate data for any of your fields going back 30 years. Climate data you can access through our platform includes:
- Daily or monthly temperature (maximum, minimum, mean)
- Rainfall (monthly total)
- Sunlight hours (monthly total)
- Wind speed (monthly average)
- Humidity (monthly average)
- Ground frost days
The platform allows you to identify and flag unusual spikes in any of these datasets. Compare these against farm records such as yield records or movements in soil nutrient levels.