From Farm to Factory Gate: Uncovering the Potential of a Digitised Supply Chain

It’s estimated our food system will need to provide for around 9.7bn people by 2050. With costs rising and a tangible need to reduce our environmental impact, we need to do more with less. In other words: the agriculture industry needs to adapt, fast.

In recent years there have been incredible innovations in the field. From seed treatments and how farmers apply valuable inputs, through to combine telematics and machinery optimisation systems, technology has touched every part of the production process. But while innovation in the field has made huge strides, it only makes up one part of the agricultural picture. What happens once the crops are out of the ground?

Transformation beyond the farm

The flow of exciting innovation often dries up from farm to factory gate. There are a few reasons for this: hesitancy to adopt new technology, the fact that crops are simply more at risk when they’re in the ground than in the shed, or even that legislation often focuses solely on crops as they’re being grown, rather than being transported around. Sometimes, it’s as simple as the fact that current systems work well enough.

But with costs rising and margins declining, everyone across the food supply chain is feeling the financial pinch. So, while it can be instinctive to stick to the ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ mentality, we aren’t even close to being as efficient as we could be.

There’s a green imperative, too. The world is changing, from governmental sustainability targets to the rise of the environmentally-conscious consumer making more stringent demands. To meet these targets, there’s a real need for more visibility across the supply chain. For livestock, that means better tracking of animal health status and movements. For crops, that means knowing what’s being harvested, where it’s being stored and where it’s going. Current manual (and often paper-based) processes cannot provide the levels of visibility required. Now is the perfect time to extend innovation beyond the farm to drive visibility and efficiency.

Innovation in action

So, what does this look like in practice? A tangible example of innovation in the food supply chain already in use by thousands of farmers and farm businesses is digital marketplace technology for livestock. Through this tech, animals can be traded without leaving the farm, reducing animal travel miles. This also mitigates the risk of livestock stress and exposure to illness, which in turn reduces the need for antibiotics, all the while significantly cutting back on carbon emissions. In 2022, Hectare’s technology enabled farm businesses to optimise the trading of livestock, improving animal welfare and reducing the carbon footprint of the beef and sheep supply chain by 2.5 million livestock miles.

Meanwhile, for crops, technology that enables online trading and the monitoring of contracts and settlements can maximise the money farmers receive for their crops, with small financial gains amplified across tonnes of grain. Farmers can keep complete control and manage all their crop trading in one central place online, which they can access at any point, anywhere. And the best part is that this sort of innovation isn’t complex or time-consuming to get in place; it’s something the industry can start doing as soon as they’re ready. This not only helps to extend the reach of trading to new buyers online through a wide network of sellers and opportunities – it also provides full visibility of the business performance, anytime and from anywhere.

We’re only at the beginning of uncovering the opportunities and benefits that come from digitising the farm to factory gate, and there’s so much more to come.