We've been so lucky to have the support of Ordnance Survey and their brilliant Geovation accelerator since we first started Soil Benchmark a few years ago.
You might know them better for their hiking maps 🏔️, but OS data - whether it's waterways or detailed field boundaries - is central to how we provide value to the thousands of farms using the platform, including one of Kieran's clients in the Cotswolds we visited a few weeks ago (along with an OS film crew 📽️!).
And Geovation's support was central in helping us build the platform initially - in fact we enjoyed working with one of their developers Richard so much he ended up joining our team full time 😆.
We're proud to have followed in the footsteps of awesome companies like Land App who have also been through the same accelerator, and it's great to see exciting new start-ups like JustFarm being supported by Geovation now as well.
Thinking back to a little under three years ago when the OS team were helping us get the platform live, I wouldn't have believed you if you'd said we would now have more than 15% of England's farmland (about 1.4 million hectares) using our platform - Google tells me that's more than all the land in Northern Ireland apparently 🤷
What started out as a (very) niche soil management tool has now - thanks to the ideas and feedback of literally hundreds of farmers and agronomists 🙏 plus a mammoth shift over the last eight months by the team 👉 Benjamin, Henry, Sabrina, Richard, Saachi, Amalia 🚀 - transformed into a fully fledged farm management software:
💩 Manure and fertiliser planning ✅
🐛 Spray recommendations ✅
💰 Costings and product ordering ✅
📋 SFI planning ✅
🪱 Plus our original soil management tools ✅
We're getting agronomists and farms cancelling their subscriptions with the big legacy farm management platforms like Gatekeeper and Omnia to manage all their day-to-day work with Soil Benchmark - something I simply wouldn't have thought was feasible when we first joined the Geovation programme.
And if you have an idea for a farming (or in fact any map-related) start-up then just get on and apply to Geovation - you won't regret it!
Isabelle, Jonathan, Valentina, Gareth, Caroline, Abadesi, Shaheer, Dave, Wayne, Murray, Emma, Paul, Paul, Nick 🙏 thank you all for your help over the last few years!
