Rooted in Agriculture,
Grounded in Science
Tom and Ben came together in early 2022 to start Soil Benchmark. But our story goes back much further.
Hectares
Farms
Our story
Tom and Ben came together in early 2022 to start Soil Benchmark. But our story goes back much further.
Tom had grown up on a small farm in North Yorkshire, and was working for a company selling bio-fertilisers to farmers. Soil samples were taken and farm data collected. But the main purpose was selling inputs. After that, the data was often left to gather dust. The questions farmers kept asking Tom, though, were not about which inputs to buy, but 'what should I be doing to look after my soils better?' or 'what are the other farmers you work with doing?'.
Meanwhile, Ben was a Digital Soil Scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, building algorithms and web applications to analyse large Β soil datasets and surveying soils across Scotland. Passionate about the role of sustainable soil management in tackling major environmental challenges, Ben wanted to use his skills to reverse the long-term declines in soil health in agriculture.
Tom and Ben decided to start Soil Benchmark to achieve this vision. Their goal was to harness the huge amount of underutilised data from both farms and government bodies to shape a future where healthy soils support profitable farms delivering nutritious food, clean rivers, thriving wildlife, and carbon removal.
Soil Benchmark has come a long way since Tom and Ben launched it with that simple idea and some very patient pilot famers! We went live in November 2023, and farmers and advisors now use our platform to support soil management on thousands of farms covering more than 1.5 million acres. We've been backed by DEFRA, Ordnance Survey, the European Space Agency, The University of Edinburgh, independent agronomists and far-sighted investors who support us on this journey.
Our users have been asking us to expand to offer Manure and Nutrient management plans too. To meet this growing demand, we've expanded our team. Henry joined us early on, adding a whole load of development experience and a knack of picking up new skills frighteningly quickly.
Sabrina - a qualified NHS doctor - swapped looking after patients for writing code to help look after soils.
And our recent seed-round (in which 8 of the 9 investors were farmer customers) we have welcomed Grace, Richard and Chandra to our fast-growing team.
But we are just getting started. We're on a mission to deliver healthy soils on 100 million hectares worldwide. Join us.
Our team
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