Introducing FarmTrace: GLOBALG.A.P. Associate Community Member for cloud-based farm management

Introducing FarmTrace: GLOBALG.A.P. Associate Community Member for cloud-based farm management

Explore how South African agri-tech company FarmTrace is providing producers with innovative digital solutions for agricultural management.

Founded in 2015, FarmTrace (Pty) Ltd. is a South African agri-tech company that has carved a niche in the agricultural technology space by providing producers with an innovative, cloud-based farm management platform. The digital tools integrate various farm data streams into a single system, supporting the monitoring, management, and optimization of farm-level operations.

A GLOBALG.A.P. Associate Community Member since May 2024, FarmTrace enables producers to seamlessly oversee production aspects from crop yields and resource allocation to HR processes and compliance checklists.

Expanding footprint across Africa

FarmTrace recently secured investment from Secha Capital and Hassium Capital, with the new funding supporting the expansion of the company’s operations across Africa and beyond. This includes continued development and scalability of the system, positioning it to feature a broader range of crops and farming types.

Werner Lategan, FarmTrace co-founder and COO, commented: “With this capital, FarmTrace will bring about the next wave of farming cost savings, and yield and efficiency improvements. We will serve more farms, more products, and more geographies, ensuring that we can help farms grow sustainably and profitably.”

Farmers at the forefront

With a producer-centered design, the approach of FarmTrace can be tailored to both smallholder and large-scale farms. This feature can sometimes be found lacking in more generalized agri-tech solutions that do not enable customization based on the unique pain points of producers.

Brendan Mullen, Managing Director of Secha Capital, stated: “We’ve met with many agri-tech companies that treated agriculture as a homogenous sector and were not built with the farmer in mind. The FarmTrace team knows the key pain points in farming operations and developed a solution to solve them.”

FarmTrace is designed to enable producers to reduce operational inefficiencies, enhance yield quality, and adopt more sustainable farming practices tailored to their specific needs – regardless of the size of their operation. The solution is therefore rooted in the needs of African producers, gaining traction as a tool to reliably improve decision making and meet environmental challenges.

As a user of the system, Production Manager at Laeveld Sitrus, Festus Coetser, summarized: "FarmTrace helped us to effectively manage almost 4,500 tasks per season, including aspects such as active ingredients, withholding periods, costs, task completion, approvals, and GLOBALG.A.P. audit management."

Rising interest in digital solutions

Digitalization in the farming sector is accelerating faster than ever. Given that smallholder producers comprise the majority of African farms, increasing awareness of digital tools such as FarmTrace offer an accessible and cost-effective means to improve operational efficiency.

Hassium Capital Managing Director, Howard Saffy, expressed his excitement in being able to support FarmTrace on their journey, commenting: “The team has done an amazing job in building a highly satisfied client base across a variety of horticulture crops, working hand-in-hand with farmers to develop solutions to meet their exact needs. We look forward to being part of the growth here in South Africa and beyond.”

Elmé Coetzer-Boersma, Managing Director of GLOBALG.A.P., welcomed FarmTrace into the community, stating: “We are excited to work with FarmTrace in the constant drive for innovation in our sector. Digitalization – and the smart solutions that enable it – is an integral part of the future of farming.”