Farmeye – widening its field of vision

Software company, Farmeye was set up in 2017, co-founded by Eoghan along with Joe Desbonnet and Brendan Allen as a spin-out from a University of Galway research project. At a basic level, it focusses on data management and technology that can improve the lives of farmers and the environment. But the nuts and bolts of this are highly sophisticated. We are talking about geographical information systems, soil carbon sampling, and soil health analysis. The company has even collaborated with the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore the vital role hedgerows play in Ireland’s ecosystem and agricultural landscape.
Until two years ago, most of its business was in Ireland, which still accounts for 70 per cent of activity, with over 1.5 million hectares mapped and stored on the Farmeye database. However, its field of vision has widened significantly in that time, and there are now Farmeye programmes established in nine countries across the UK and Europe.
Eoghan offers a bit more insight: “We provide software tools for measuring natural capital on farms and in nature. We have three different streams of technologies. The first stream, which involves mobile apps, is used in the fields by trained engineers or agricultural advisors, or soil samplers, for example. Then, we have a set of satellite-driven technologies, which model everything from water quality to farm habitats. And finally, we have a reporting mapping system, that’s posted on the web where a farmer can access it to assess biodiversity or water quality or generate a soil report for the farm, all at the click of a button.”

Soil health

Outlining Farmeye’s customer base, Eoghan says: “Our customer is usually the likes of dairy co-ops such as Tirlán or Lakeland Dairies or companies like Diageo. In the case of Diageo, we run a regenerative agriculture programme with Guinness where farmers could be end users as suppliers of grains. Another example is Lakeland Dairies. Every year, up to 300 Lakeland suppliers sign up to the co-op’s soil-health programme. Through that, the farmers get a comprehensive colour-coded map report from Farmeye, which lets them plan their fertiliser use very efficiently, saving money in the process.
“Ultimately, the farmer is the end user, but typically they’re not the direct customer of Farmeye. The aim is to help the farmer economise, to make more profit. It’s two-fold really, from the farmer’s point of view. Firstly, to save money. The average dairy supplier in the soil health programme with Lakelands would be saving about 30 per cent on their fertiliser bill every year, by having an efficient fertiliser plan because of our GPS soil-sampling and colour-coded mapping services.”
As well as operational efficiency, there is an all-round positive impact on the environment, says Eoghan: “Because less fertiliser is being used, less diesel has been burned, and there is reduced loss into the atmosphere or groundwater. It’s a win-win – positive for the farmer, and the environment.”

Demand-driven services

Demand for Farmeye’s services has grown significantly in recent years, as food companies, agri-food corporates, government agencies, and the likes, come under pressure from the marketplace in terms of scope 3 emissions, and are demanding a verifiable carbon footprint on products. Eoghan elaborates: “They’re also under pressure from the regulators. There’s new legislation, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which has just come in this year. That impacts some of the larger agri-food companies in Ireland. The third direction from which pressure is coming is financial markets. Large corporations, if they require funding, now need sustainability credentials as part of the data set that the financial institutions will look for before approving lending.”

Automated data collection

Eoghan discusses the practicalities of using advanced technologies to drive their services: “The simplest principle that we like to follow in Farmeye is that farmers are busy people. While they might be end users, for example, of our soil reports, the last thing they want is another app or another site where they have to enter data. As far as possible, we try to collect data automatically or through an app that’s used by a trained professional who could be an agronomist or a farm advisor. While the farmer can easily access the end results, we don’t want to be asking the farmer to spend their valuable time learning a new technology or inputting data. The service needs to be automated to the greatest extent possible. We take a lot of data from satellites, for example.
“We’re pulling data from the European Sentinel satellites [operated by the European Space Agency], which pass over Ireland twice a week. We also pull in data from the European weather model, which is updated for every three kilometre-squared grid, four times a day. We’re also integrated digitally with all the main soil labs in Ireland and the UK. Farmeye is able to predict pinch points, for instance, in terms of possible contamination of waterways from nitrogen, phosphorous or other potential contaminants.” 

Monitoring water quality

There are four different streams of natural capital, Eoghan explains, and they are the natural resources employed in farming. “We divide them into soil health, soil carbon, biodiversity, and water quality. We have a suite of technology products and reporting services associated with each of those four pillars. For water quality, we’re the first company in Ireland with the digital capability, at the touch of a button, to generate a water quality report for every farm in the country. This report will identify potential pollution sources above ground and below ground on that farm and can draw on the latest reporting data from local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitoring stations.” 

Two-handed approach

“In terms of manual data collection, we either employ subcontractors or our customer could have trained agronomists who go out to farms and use mobile apps to geotag, photograph, survey, soil sample, whatever it is that needs recording on the ground.” 
Meanwhile, distance calculations are becoming increasingly detailed. It’s a fascinating area, but with potential pitfalls, Eoghan explains: “There are companies out there, some of them based in London, that trade carbon credits based off nothing more than a satellite picture. That, to me, is very dangerous. It’s not realistic, it’s not verifiable, and it’s not trustworthy. You need that groundwork, that survey, even if it’s only a geotagged photograph in the field. However, there is a lot of data that can be captured remotely. We use a combination of the two, making use of satellite data for regular updates at scale, while maintaining boots on the ground to verify that what’s being picked up by the satellite is correct. The satellite can pick up a lot. We use the ‘normalized derivative vegetation index’ (NDVI). Basically, that’s an index of chlorophyll activity. If you have 30 fields on a farm, it can monitor growth over a 12-month period. While it won’t give you an actual tonnage of yield, it will tell you if the field- had the same crop and were managed the same way. It’ll rank them from 1-30. That’s a very useful tool based on satellite data.”

Monetising carbon

Eoghan says that we are lucky in Ireland that we have very healthy soils, in general, with just enough rainfall. “As a result, we have higher levels of carbon in our soils than most of Europe. Across the EU, carbon sequestration in soils is not allocated at a national level to farms or agriculture. It’s counted under Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry, which is a separate category. That means farmers can’t get credit for carbon they might sequester in their soils. In many countries, it’s treated differently. In Australia, for example, where we have a project starting off, the government regulated for carbon farming two years ago. As a farmer in Australia, if you can verifiably measure your soil carbon, and come back and measure it in five years’ time, you can get a payment from the government based on how much soil carbon you have built or increased over that period.”
Eoghan says that while it is possible for a farmer in Ireland to measure and get a carbon credit, and sell that on to what’s called a voluntary market, it’s not regulated by Government or at EU level. “Because of that, there’s a reluctance among farmers and the industry in general to get involved. I share that hesitancy because we know there is legislation coming down the line. The EU is developing a carbon farming framework. Legislation is expected in Ireland as well. It’s probably better that people wait until the legislation is in place rather than do something now that might not be in line with it.”