Showcase update: Land App supporting land managers and ELMS trials

The Land App is an easy to use digital mapping platform that enables land managers to benefit from new agri-environmental schemes, connect with Natural Capital investors and design integrated estate plans that support best practice.  The company presented in the Start-up Showcase at REAP 2020 we caught up with the team to find out what has happened since. 
Having recently partnered with three Environmental Land Management trials The Land App aims to help groups of landowners prepare for natural capital investment and to design integrated estate plans that support best practices to benefit from agri-environment schemes.

ELMS Trials

One of these Land App trials is in the Surrey Hills, where 22 landowners are working in collaboration with advisors on a combined 4,500acre project to improve natural capital.
“The Land App allows land managers to work collaboratively with advisors to build independent land management plans,” explains Partnership and Growth Manager, Dan Geerah, “but crucially the plans from multiple holdings can be brought into a single view to ensure the projects are aligned and deliver maximum benefit.”

Landscape level change needed

The Land App has embarked on a series of ambitious projects bringing landowners together. With over 1.2 million hectares of farmland now represented, the digital mapping platform is being used to help steer land managers to best manage their assets over large land areas.
Dan explains:
“Landowners are making good progress with countryside stewardship at an individual holding level, with wildflower meadows, buffer strips etc, but for actual ecological restoration we need those meadows and buffer strips to be connected across the wider landscape.”
“In Surrey we’re trialling a more user-friendly Land App dashboard which shows the overall farm plan, aggregated across all participants in the study, and indicates the total area eligible for habitat enhancement (e.g number of trees that need to be planted in each location / area for wildflower creation), and approximately how many biodiversity credits this will generate – and all of these elements update as individual land managers in the project update their holdings.”
“We’re asking the farmers what aspirations they have for their land, and then we have this ‘what-if’ approach – what if by 10 years’ time, all of the land management plans in this project have been completed – what benefits would that bring to the landscape in terms of: habitat connectivity; carbon sequestration; floodwater mitigation; and biodiversity.”

Supportive community

The Land App has now grown to over 7000 users and according to Dan the user base is starting to develop into a community of its own: “Most of our clients are very self-sufficient, with some key individuals helping to train other users on the app. We want this to be a platform for consultants and land managers to use side by side without intervention from the Land App team.”
This year of success has followed from the Land App’s participation in the Start-Up Showcase at REAP2020. To get the first look at this years’ Start-Up Showcase participants, book your tickets for REAP2021 now!

REAP 2021: Changing Time(s) for Agriculture – 10th November 2021

Imagine a world where agriculture is not constrained by time. The ability to manage and manipulate time is increasing and REAP 2021 will explore the advances in technology and breakthroughs in science that is making this possible.
REAP brings together people from across the agri-tech ecosystem who believe that innovation is the engine for change. The conference bridges the gap between producer needs and technology solutions and showcases exciting agri-tech start-ups.