Livestock records, crop management, SFI compliance, and BCMS reporting. Built around how your holding actually works.
Farming generates a volume of data that most industries would struggle with. Field-by-field crop inputs, livestock movements, soil test results, spray records, feed logs, weather conditions, machinery hours, labour costs, environmental scheme evidence, regulatory submissions. Every piece of information connects to something else, and the consequences of poor record-keeping range from lost revenue to failed inspections to forfeited grant payments.
The type of holding determines which records matter most. An arable farm needs detailed crop rotation planning, variable rate application maps, and spray records that satisfy BASIS requirements. A livestock operation needs animal registers, movement records for BCMS (or the incoming Livestock Information Service), medicine books, and feed traceability. A mixed farm needs all of it, and the data needs to connect.
At minimum, farm management software needs to handle:
More advanced systems also cover variable rate application maps using soil sampling data, machinery scheduling and maintenance logs, labour allocation across enterprises, supply chain traceability from field to buyer, and automated submissions to regulatory bodies.
Arable farms live and die by input costs versus yield. The software needs field-level gross margin tracking, detailed spray and fertiliser records that satisfy Red Tractor and FACTS requirements, and integration with precision equipment. Variable rate nitrogen maps based on satellite imagery or soil conductivity scanning are increasingly standard. Harvest yield mapping needs to flow back into the system so next season's plans reflect what actually happened, not what was budgeted.
Cattle operations require individual animal tracking from birth to death or sale, with medicine records that satisfy the Veterinary Medicines Directorate's record-keeping rules. The current BCMS Cattle Tracing System is being replaced by the Livestock Information Service, with full rollout expected by end of 2026. From 2027, all newborn calves in England will need Bovine Electronic Identification tags. Software that cannot handle this transition will create problems.
Sheep enterprises need flock registers, movement reporting through ARAMS, and breeding records. Dairy operations add daily yield recording per cow, somatic cell count tracking, mastitis and fertility management, and parlour system integration.
Mixed farms are where generic software breaks down fastest. A 400-hectare holding running 200 cattle, 600 ewes, 150 hectares of combinable crops, an SFI agreement, and a farm shop needs software where all these enterprises connect. Feed grown on the arable side needs to reflect as a cost transfer to the livestock enterprises. Environmental scheme actions on specific parcels need to link to cropping restrictions. The farm shop needs stock management tied to the livestock enterprise.
Most off-the-shelf platforms handle one or two of these well and bolt on the rest as afterthoughts.
DEFRA's Sustainable Farming Incentive has changed significantly for 2026. SFI26 ties every payment to documented delivery. Photos, operation logs, invoices, and dates must be linked to specific land parcels and specific actions. This is a shift from "plan and report" to "do and document." The evidence requirements strongly favour digital systems that can capture geo-tagged photographs, attach them to the right parcel, and generate the audit trail that scheme inspectors need to see.
Farmers must maintain records for the full agreement duration and beyond if required for audit. Paper-based record-keeping is technically possible but impractical at scale when you are managing multiple SFI actions across dozens of parcels.
Cattle keepers must report movements to BCMS within three days. The new Livestock Information Service (LIS) simplifies this into a single combined report where one farm reports the movement and both holdings are updated automatically. Software that integrates with CTS Web Services today, and can adapt to LIS when it arrives, saves significant administrative time and reduces the risk of late or incorrect submissions.
The Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) 2026 made £50 million available in grants between £1,000 and £25,000 per theme across productivity, animal health and welfare, and slurry management. Over 8,800 applicants secured funding through FETF 2025, with successful offers totalling more than £68 million.
The UK farm management software market has been dominated by a small number of providers for years. Recently, ownership changes and new entrants have disrupted the landscape. Here is an honest look at what is available.
| Provider | What They Offer | Pricing | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gatekeeper (Farmplan / TELUS) | The most widely used arable system in the UK. Field mapping, crop recording, spray and fertiliser logs, harvest data, gross margins. Now owned by TELUS, with migration to their new Crop Management platform underway through 2026. | Subscription-based, tiered by farm size and modules. Contact for quote. Migration to TELUS Crop Management is scheduled. | Established arable farms comfortable with a desktop-first system. Future unclear as TELUS migrates users. |
| Omnia (Hutchinsons) | Full farm management system with strong agronomy integration. Variable rate maps, soil analysis, crop walking records, financial planning. Mobile app works offline. Backed by Hutchinsons' agronomist network. | From £3.15/ha (Field Manager) to £6/ha (full features), reducing on a sliding scale past 300ha. | Arable farms wanting precision agriculture tools integrated with crop management records. |
| Greenlight Grower Management (Muddy Boots / TELUS) | Cloud-based crop recording and compliance. Now also under TELUS ownership alongside Gatekeeper. Focus on grower management and supply chain traceability. | Subscription-based with no upfront costs. Contact for quote. 30-day free trial available. | Growers supplying retailers who need supply chain traceability and crop assurance records. |
| Figured | Financial management and budgeting platform. Livestock and crop production tracking, forecasting, and reporting. Integrates with Xero for accounting. Works through certified advisers. | Subscription through a Certified Figured Adviser. Free one-month trial. Contact for quote. | Farms focused on financial performance, budgeting, and working closely with their accountant. |
| John Deere Operations Center | Equipment and field data management. Work planning, crop planning, maintenance tracking, fleet management. Integrates with John Deere machinery for automatic data transfer. | Free to use. Requires John Deere equipment for full integration. | Farms already running John Deere machinery who want equipment-linked field records. |
| Agrivi | Global platform with UK presence (based in Pershore). Crop and farm planning, pest management alerts, financial tracking. Aimed at farms, cooperatives, and agribusinesses. | Custom pricing based on farm size and requirements. Contact for quote. | Larger operations or cooperatives wanting a data-driven platform with pest and disease alerts. |
The most significant change in this market is the TELUS acquisition. Both Gatekeeper and Greenlight Grower Management are now owned by the same Canadian telecoms company. Gatekeeper users are being migrated to TELUS Crop Management through 2026. For farms that have used Gatekeeper for decades, this creates uncertainty about data continuity, feature parity, and long-term direction.
The platforms listed above are functional products. But they were all designed around a generalised idea of what a farm looks like. Your holding is not general.
A 200-hectare arable unit in Lincolnshire operates differently from a 60-cow suckler herd on the Welsh borders. A hill farm with an SFI agreement and a farm shop has workflows that none of these platforms were designed to handle together. A mixed holding in Devon running beef, sheep, arable, and holiday lets has four distinct enterprises that all share costs, labour, and land.
What typically happens is this: you adopt a platform, discover it handles your main enterprise reasonably well but cannot cope with the rest, and start building workarounds. A separate spreadsheet for the livestock finances. A notebook for the SFI evidence because the software's environmental module does not match your agreement actions. A whiteboard in the office for the things the system cannot track.
The Gatekeeper situation illustrates a deeper problem with dependency on third-party platforms. Thousands of UK farms built their entire record-keeping around Gatekeeper over the past 20 years. Now TELUS, a Canadian telecoms company, is migrating them to a new system on a timeline they did not choose. Their historical data, their workflow habits, and their staff training are all at the mercy of a corporate decision made in Vancouver.
Every subscription platform carries this risk. When the vendor changes direction, raises prices, or gets acquired, you have no say. Your farm records, the operational backbone of your business, live on their servers under their control.
A bespoke system starts with your holding. Not a product demo. Not a template designed for a generic 500-hectare arable unit. Your actual daily workflow, from morning livestock checks to spray record entry to SFI evidence capture to end-of-month financial review.
We sit down with you and map exactly how your farm operates. Which enterprises you run, how they interact, what records you actually need versus what existing software forces you to maintain. Then we build a system that matches it precisely.
ESRE builds farm management systems for a one-off cost. No annual subscription. No per-hectare fees. No price increases when you add another enterprise or bring more land into the system.
The exact cost depends on the scope of what you need. A focused system covering crop records and field mapping for a single arable enterprise sits at the lower end. A comprehensive platform with livestock tracking, environmental compliance, financial reporting, and regulatory integration across a mixed holding sits higher.
| System Scope | Typical One-Off Cost | Equivalent Subscription Cost Over 5 Years |
|---|---|---|
| Core system: field mapping, crop records, spray logs, basic financial tracking | £8,000 to £15,000 | £9,000 to £18,000+ (based on £3-6/ha for 600ha) |
| Full system: above plus livestock registers, BCMS/LIS integration, SFI compliance, enterprise-level financials | £15,000 to £30,000 | £25,000 to £50,000+ (multiple subscriptions combined) |
| Multi-enterprise: full system across arable, livestock, environmental schemes, diversified income streams, and farm shop or direct sales | £25,000 to £55,000 | £50,000 to £100,000+ (three or four separate platforms) |
The comparison is straightforward. A 600-hectare arable farm paying Omnia's full rate of £6/ha spends £3,600 per year on crop management alone. Add a livestock platform, a financial tool like Figured, and an environmental compliance system, and the total quickly exceeds £5,000 to £8,000 annually. Over five years, that is £25,000 to £40,000 in subscriptions, and you still own nothing. Stop paying and you lose access to your records.
A bespoke system typically pays for itself within two to four years. After that, every year is savings. And the system is yours permanently.
Every system we build, the client owns all the code. There is no vendor lock-in. No corporate acquisition that forces you onto a new platform you did not ask for. No API that stops working because a Canadian telecoms company changed its strategy.
Your farm records stay on infrastructure you control. If you want the system hosted on a server in your farm office, it runs there. If you want cloud hosting on UK-based servers, we set that up. Either way, the data is yours and no third party can restrict your access to it.
We also train you and your team to evolve the system using AI. Since December 2025, AI tools have reached the maturity to work reliably alongside people for maintaining and extending software. We set up your AI to understand your specific codebase, with failsafe environments, version control, and automated backups, so you can make changes yourself with confidence. Add a new enterprise, adjust a reporting format, or build a new compliance output without waiting for a vendor's product roadmap.
We built a complete business management system for Crownhill Gardens, covering stock, orders, customers, deliveries, documents, and procurement. The same approach applies to farms: a single, connected system where a field's crop records link to its input costs, its yield data, its SFI actions, and its contribution to the bottom line. Everything in one place, built exactly for how your holding works.
A core farm management system typically takes six to ten weeks from first conversation to live deployment. More complex systems covering multiple enterprises, regulatory integrations, and data migration from existing platforms take ten to sixteen weeks. We work around the farming calendar, so we can time deployment to avoid harvest or lambing.
Yes. We regularly import historical data from Gatekeeper, spreadsheets, and other farm management platforms. Field histories, livestock records, crop rotation data, and financial records can all be migrated. The goal is a clean transition with no data loss, so you start the new system with your full operational history intact.
We build integration with precision agriculture hardware including GPS guidance systems, yield monitors, soil samplers, and weather stations. If your equipment outputs data in standard formats (ISOXML, shapefiles, or CSV), we can connect it. For proprietary systems like John Deere, we work with the available APIs and data export options.
We are always available for support, changes, and enhancements. But because you own the code and we train your AI to understand it, you are not dependent on us for day-to-day changes. That is the point. When DEFRA changes the SFI requirements or LIS replaces CTS, you can adapt the system yourself or ask us to handle it.
Either. Farms with reliable broadband can run entirely cloud-based on UK servers. Holdings in areas with poor connectivity can run the system locally with periodic cloud sync when connection is available. We can also set up a hybrid approach where critical functions work offline and data synchronises when you are back online.
Yes. The system supports multiple users with role-based access. The farm manager sees everything. Stockworkers see livestock records. Spray operators see relevant field data. Your accountant sees financial reports. Each person gets the views and permissions appropriate to their role.