Startup makes it easier to calculate emissions from agricultural activities

The company MyEasyFarm, which offers digital solutions aimed at regenerative and low-carbon agriculture, will now connect its platform to Cool Farm Tool, the Cool Farm Alliance‘s CO2 emissions calculator. This non-profit organisation brings together more than 160 members and partners, including companies in the agri-food sector, NGOs, academic institutions, farmers and agronomists.

The Cool Farm Alliance manages the Cool Farm tool, initially developed by the University of Aberdeen and funded by Unilever, to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and help farmers with sustainability metrics and show the benefits of regenerative practices and carbon sequestration.

In practical terms, the Cool Farm Tool can now be used, because of the API connection, as a calculator incorporated into the MyEasyFarm platform, which helps farmers, co-operatives and other groups in the food sector to raise levels of efficiency, sustainability and carbon management through advanced technologies and data integration.

The integration between the MyEasyFarm platform and the Cool Farm Tool will enable the calculation of carbon indicators for agricultural areas based on data entered by the farmers themselves. These indicators will then be aggregated at a co-operative or agro-industrial level to track reductions in scope 3 CO2 emissions and also compliance with regenerative agriculture specifications.

‘The connection with Cool Farm Tool will offer our customers in the agricultural supply chain a complementary calculator for reducing CO2 emissions, alongside other calculators such as SIMEOS AMG from AgroTransfert and SAFYE CO2 from CESBIO, to which our platform is already connected. This new connection is part of our open platform strategy, with more than 20 connections to external data sources or calculators,’ explains François Thierart, CEO and co-founder of MyEasyFarm.

MyEasyFarm has been part of the Cool Farm Alliance since 2021 and has participated in various exchanges with other members at annual meetings. This continuous exchange reinforced the startup’s decision to connect its platform to the Cool Farm Tool, the company emphasises.

The MyEasyFarm platform collects, manages, transfers and analyses agricultural data from many sources (crops, weather indicators, IoT sensors, satellites, drones, machinery) to help reduce the use of inputs and improve crop management. It seeks to promote ease of use, without manual data entry, and compatibility with existing agricultural equipment.

MyEasyFarm is based in VillagebyCA Reims, France, and has offices in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Brazil.

Benefits of Cool Farm Tool

According to the University of Aberdeen, since it was developed, the Cool Farm Tool has been used in 118 countries, carrying out more than 47,000 assessments and generating significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

One of these cases helped Unilever’s tomato plantations in five countries to reduce emissions by 25 per cent. In another scenario, ADAS, the UK’s independent agricultural and environmental consultancy, and PepsiCo, working together with Walkers Crisps, achieved an average 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions and water use over five years (2010-2015) on their potato plantations in the UK.

Another example comes from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in India, in co-operation with Marks & Spencer, who used the tool to assess the emissions produced by cotton cultivation in Warangal. The results were used to promote better management practices and also to reduce the use of fertilisers.

Digital agriculture

The global digital agriculture market surpassed $20.8 billion in 2023 and is expected to exceed $49.5 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.1 per cent over the period. Cloud computing and mobile Internet are expected to drive growth, according to research by Precedence Research.

In the study, digital agriculture was considered to be the set of software tools developed to manage and optimise agricultural operations, automating activities such as production, monitoring, data storage and record management.

The growing adoption of advanced agricultural technologies, automation and data analysis is expected to drive the market forward. In addition, increased awareness about the benefits of digital agriculture in developing agricultural production to meet the growing demand for food is also expected to stimulate the market during the research forecast period.