Soil Benchmark

🚨 📢 PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - re the Farmer Rally in London tomorrow from Soil Benchmark Ahead of the farmer #rally in London tomorrow aiming to protest the Budget’s changes to inheritance tax for farms, we thought we’d share some *helpful* guidance for anyone considering spreading a “message” in central London. (Spoiler alert: it’s a joke 🤣) At such a stressful time for farmers, we wanted to give everyone a chuckle, but just to be crystal clear: ⛔️ No machinery should be brought to the rally – please stick to the organisers’ guidelines. ❤️ Public support is key – let’s keep it positive, tidy and respectful. We stand with our farmer customers and understand the frustration and stress around the recent Budget changes. Here’s to making your voices heard – and doing so with a sense of humour! 🙌 P.S. This is also a shameless plug for our brand new Manure Maestro software, which takes the stress out of NVZ compliance (and, yes, actual slurry spreading). 😉 🎥 Check out the video below for a bit of light relief! 👇 #farming #inheritancetax #iht #budget #budget2024 #londonrally #savefamilyfarms

🧑💻 🌟 🙏 Henry joined Soil Benchmark just over a year ago as employee 1️⃣, and our first full-time developer. He hit the ground running immediately to help us get our first product ‘Soil Sage’ live a couple of months later. Now more than 2000 farms are using this software to create SFI-compliant Soil Management Plans covering 5%+ of all England’s farmland. Henry has been the heart of the dev team who have built this product. As our team continues to grow, with the addition of Sabrina, soon Richard, and more joining soon, there couldn’t be a better person to step up to lead on our whole technical architecture as our new CTO. Congratulations Henry and thank you, we simply would not be here without you. 🧑💻 🌟 🙏

🚀 We’re Hiring! Come join a soil health software startup that in under a year has signed up over 5% of England’s farmland 🌍 🧑💻 We’re hiring a Full-Stack Developer, but before I dive into the details, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come and explain a bit about who you’d be joining. It all started with an idea: Could we make soil data more useful for farmers? To be honest, back then, Benjamin Butler and I weren’t exactly sure what the product would actually be 😬. But with some funding from Innovate UK, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Ordnance Survey, and most importantly the trust of some incredibly patient pilot farmers, we got started. I spent lots of days in farm offices (Sophie, Simon, Chris ☕) transcribing old soil samples, while Ben spun them up into interactive maps. But we soon realised that it was actually agronomists rather than farmers who saw the most potential in what we were doing. And when the #SustainableFarmingIncentive was announced in July 2023, we knew we were onto something. By the time the tenth agronomist called to say these new Soil Management Plans looked like they would be a real pain to do at scale, we dropped everything else and focused on solving that. We hired Henry and got to work with a fantastic group of agronomist beta-testers (too many to namecheck here but you know who you are 🙏). We went live in November 2023, made our first sale that afternoon, and now we’re proud to work with over 5.2% of all England’s farmland. 35% of the 1900+ farms using the platform pay for premium access to full Soil Management Plans, meaning we actually hit profitability in the summer and Sabrina came on board! 🎉 But our customers have been asking for the platform to do more. They want our intuitive, map based interface to produce Manure and Nutrient Management Plans. We’ve just closed an over-subscribed seed round to make that happen. We’re proud to say that 8 out of our 9 investors are farmers themselves, including Sir Richard Sutton Limited (SRSL) who were actually one of those very first pilot farms. They have a vested interest in us shipping these new features ASAP. The wonderful team at SFC Capital have also followed-on their previous investment. Now, we’re looking for a Full-Stack Developer to help us build these features and more. You’ll play a crucial role in shaping the future of our platform and improving soil health at scale. We’re not looking for experience so much as for someone: 🌱 Passionate about / motivated by what we're doing 🪱 💡 Curious and good at problem solving - more interested in this than whether you've worked in our whole techstack before 🤝 We want to work / spend time with If that sounds like you, check out the role and apply today. 🚜 👉 https://lnkd.in/eas7YFbK #agtech #hiring #soilhealth #sustainability #farming #growth #startup

🪱 How to Build a Soil Management Plan for SFI: Free Webinar 🧠   The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs's new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) has seen widespread uptake, with more than 23,000 agreements alrady in place.  75% of farmers in SFI agreements have opted to include the SAM1 action, which focuses on Soil Management Plans (SMPs). But creating these compliant plans can feel complex, especially given the yearly updates required to maintain eligibility for payments. 💡 Here’s what you need to know about building an SFI-compliant Soil Management Plan:   1. Risk Evaluation: It’s crucial to assess risks like runoff, erosion, and nitrogen leaching. Pay attention to steep slopes, light soils, and proximity to watercourses, which all heighten these risks.         2. Soil Testing: Ensure that Soil Organic Matter (SOM) tests are up to date. These are a key part of your plan and should be integrated field by field.         3. Management Actions: Tailor your actions to address the specific risks identified. This might include adjusting crop rotations, planting buffer strips, or altering how livestock is managed to improve soil health.         4. Annual Review: Keep in mind that SMPs are living documents. You’ll need to update your plan every year based on the latest soil conditions and crop management to continue receiving your SFI payments.   🚜 Why it matters: For many farmers, these plans aren’t just a box to tick—they’re an important tool for securing SFI payments and improving soil health. DEFRA is set to pay out over £17.5 million annually to farms currently signed up. Ensuring your plan is accurate and up to date is key to benefiting from these payments.   🎥 Need help navigating the process? Join one of Soil Benchmark's free webinars this month where we’ll guide you through building a compliant SMP, step by step. We’ve already helped 1,600+ farms across 423,000 hectares create compliant plans. Our goal is to make this process easier for you, while also improving the health of your soil.   🔎 What you’ll learn: • How to set up your farm in less than a minute using only its SBI number ➕ • Accessing pre-populated risk maps with data from Ordnance Survey, Environment Agency, and British Geological Survey 🗺️ • Reviewing and updating pre-populated management proposals 🔍 • Integrating Soil Organic Matter (SOM) sample results 🪱 • Exporting everything into a professional PDF plan ready for Rural Payments Agency inspections 📋   📅 Webinar Dates and Registration: •   Thursday, 12th September at 12:00: https://t.ly/PLkKd •   Tuesday, 24th September at 12:00: https://t.ly/qcSx2     #SustainableFarmingIncentive #SFI #SoilManagement #DEFRA #Farmer #Agronomist Please share with anyone you think might be interested in joining Sarah, Emma, Louise, Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust, Sophie, Graham, Ian, Ian, George, Sam, Niels, Joe, Thomas, Andrew, Andrew, Minette, Steve, Janet, Robert

🌱 Soil Benchmark has been selected to tackle the AgriSearch Challenge as part of the Tenfold NetZero Accelerator Programme. 🚜 Soil Benchmark develops innovative soil management solutions and will collaborate closely with AgriSearch to transform nutrient management on the accelerator. 🔗 Stay up to date with Soil Benchmark's journey to drive sustainable innovation here: https://ow.ly/QHMp50SxTjz

📣 🗞 👩🌾 SFI23 UPDATE: New update from DEFRA on take-up of SFI23. Read on for a deep dive 🕵♂️ into the options the 13,900 farmers who have signed up for SFI23 so far have selected... 🤓 (Nerdy post warning) A couple of weeks ago the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a detailed update of take-up of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI23). DEFRA say that over 20,000 farms have now applied (not too bad out of the 100,000 or so farms in England who would be eligible). However, the data only covers 13,900 farms who had agreements in place by 1st April. I’ve cross referenced these with the new payment rates DEFRA published in January. Here are the results: 💸Altogether these agreements will give out a remarkable £299,390,400 in their first year.💸 🎉 2 Most Popular Actions: 🎉 Overall, the management and planning payments are easily the most utilised: 🤝 MPA1: SFI Management Payment Agreements: 13,100 Value: £21,440,000 Unsuprisingly the entry level payment of up to £2,000/farm is the most popular. Not quite sure why 800 farms chose not to enter it 🤔 🌱 SAM1: Assess Soil, Produce a Soil Management Plan and Test Soil Organic Matter Agreements: 10,200 covering 1,600,000ha Value: £10,589,400 Nearly ¾ of farms chose this option. Soil Benchmark are here to help them create the Soil Management Plans they have to produce in the next 12 months (having already helped 1000+ farms covering 285,000 ha) - head to https://lnkd.in/evUUYbSH. 💰 3 Most Lucrative Actions 💰 While these actions are not among the most popular, their high payment rates make them by far the most financially rewarding (these three actions make up 43% of all SFI23 money given out!) 🐑 SAM3: Establish and Maintain Herbal Leys Agreements: 5,200 covering 175,000ha Value: £66,850,000 More than a third of all farms are doing this, and it alone is 22% of all SAM1 payments 😮 🐦 AHL2: Winter Bird Food on Arable and Horticultural Land Agreements: 2,300 covering 38,200ha Value: £32,584,600 The hefty £853/ha payment tempted a lot of farmers, one of the reasons DEFRA then capped the total amount of a farm that could be put into this and 5 other actions which take land out of food production 😋 🥜 NUM3: Legume Fallow Agreements: 1,600 covering 50,700ha Value: £30,065,100 Again the high payment rate of £593/ha has been a popular option. 🔎 Suprising omission - why have AHL1 (600 agreements) and IPM2 (900 agreements) proved less popular despite paying out £700+/ha? They were in fact the 3rd and 5th LEAST popular actions respectively. Any comments welcome. You can find the full data here: https://lnkd.in/eyCPBnx6 #SFI23 #SustainableFarming #Agriculture #SoilManagement Emily / Andrew / Sarah / Charles / Sean / Adam / Jeremy / Tom / Tom / Minette / Clive / Abi / Anna / Charlotte / Joe / Henry / Andrew / Gavin / Mark / George / Adam 👏 Michael Gove / George Eustice / Janet Hughes / Robbie Moore / Jonathan Baker / Tamara Finkelstein / Steve Barclay

🆘 We need your help! 🆘 🚀 Soil Benchmark has been selected for the Focal Top 100, placing us among the top 5% of the 2,100 startups who applied to pitch at their S24 Demo Day. But only the top 20 get to pitch. You can help us get into that Top 20 if you: 👍 Like this post ♻ Share this post 📨 Get in touch with Focal. Maybe its worth going back to the start to explain a bit more about why we're so excited about this opportunity: Benjamin Butler and Tom Scrope started Soil Benchmark in Summer 2022 on a mission to build software to improve soil management practices. We got off the ground when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Innovate UK, and Ordnance Survey plus some amazing angel investors took a punt on us before we'd even worked out what we were building. We started iterating through initial ideas, working with a group of quite unbelievably patient pilot customers, who each spent hours taking us through the details of how we could help them. But our big break was when DEFRA announced last summer the requirement for Soil Management Plans as part of SFI23. Pretty much all of our pilot customers rang up in the next few days and asked if we could do something to help with the time these were going to take. We took on the incredible Henry Deacy and with the help of geospatial wizard Richard Hargreaves and software design maestro Anastasiia Kostiv, sat down with a load of beta-testers, and wrote a lot of code. We launched in November 2023, with about 10,000ha added from our beta-testers. 5 months later, we're proud to have helped more than 1000 farms covering 280,000ha - that's over 3% of all land eligible for SAM1 in England. We're now at breakeven and growing month-on-month. But there are tens of thousands more farms in England we want to reach. And users are asking us to build out products 2 and 3 to save them even more time. In other words, we've reached a pivotal point where we're ready to scale. But bootstrapping would mean this would take - with our amazing but still small team - many many months. And we want to get these new products to customers a lot quicker than that. To do so we need additional resources so we can expand the team, and allow us to get on with building more products and helping tens of thousands more farms. And this is where Focal comes in. They run a 'Demo Day' which would put us in front of hundreds of the sort of investors who might be able to provide the scale of resources we need to scale up quickly. We're thrilled to have made it to the Top 100 out of 2,100 applicants 🏆 . But only the Top 20 get to join the Demo Day 😬 . We would be incredibly grateful if you can help us get into that Top 20: 👍 Like this post ♻ Share this post 📨 Get in touch with Focal We want to help improve how soils are managed across millions of hectares. Getting into the Focal demo day would help us to get there. Thanks so much in advance for your help! #FocalTop100 #SoilBenchmark #AgTech #S24DemoDay