Technology experts at Irish university create geo-tagged app to aid farmers

A geo-tagged app developed in Waterford is helping farmers across Ireland and beyond to receive more seamless Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) grant payments. 

Technology experts at Waterford's Walton Institute in South East Technological University (SETU) have created AgriSnap, an app designed to reduce the need for stressful on-farm inspections. It also makes payments under the new Integrated Administrative Control System (IACS) for administering CAP grants and the resolution of claim queries smoother. 

Co-designed with key stakeholders, including farmers, agri advisors and departmental staff, AgriSnap was developed with the help of funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

The precision photo app allows farmers to send land parcel pictures and information to the grant payments body in seconds to validate payments.  

The application allows European Paying Agencies such as DAFM to send photo requests to end users, farmers and their advisors. The user can return images to the Paying Agency with each image being tagged with key information including geolocation, timestamp, and device information.

The device location is tracked through high accuracy GPS data, Walton Institute’s Dave Hearne explained. 

He said, "Land Parcel and Request Information is available through a map to allow a high quality user experience. Augmented Reality and help functionality also serve to make this a user-friendly app.

"Additional features include multi-factor authentication, multi-user functionality, photo gallery management, scheme selection menu, asynchronous scheme management and persisted login." 

CAP accounts for just over 30% of the EU budget and farmer supports worth €60bn annually, with payments linked to eligible hectares, valid agricultural activity, compliance with several environmental and management requirements and more. 

The AgriSnap innovation is all part of the wider New IACS Vision in Action (NIVA) project led by Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. The international consortium includes 27 project partners, including 9 Member State Paying Agencies all working together to develop and implement technologies that will deliver a more seamless administrative control of CAP.

The Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine’s Stephen Carberry said, "As part of its development the AgriSnap app has already been tried and tested across a number of Irish schemes in 2021 and 2022, successfully demonstrating its security and ease-of-use. It has also allowed DAFM to streamline the payment processing with the schemes involved. 

"In 2021 DAFM rolled out the app for usage on the REAP scheme and the Protein Aid Scheme as part of Checks by Monitoring. This resulted in the submission of over 50,000 photos by farmers and advisors. Following its success, the app was subsequently rolled out this year on two additional schemes, the Straw Incorporation Measure & the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).

"To date over 100,000 photos have been submitted via AgriSnap and the feedback received from users has been very positive and has led to further improvements in the user experience of the app.” 

The AgriSnap app is available on the Google Play and Apple iOS stores.