The Rural Payments Agency, which oversees the delivery of more than 40 support schemes, is looking to deploy new digital systems that use satellite imagery to enable remote compliance monitoring
The major project of delivering the UK’s post-Brexit farming and agricultural regime is looking for a £20m-plus technology partner to provide a satellite-powered system to transform “monitoring processes… [that] are manual, resource-intensive, inefficient and have high fraud and error rates”.
Overseen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Farming and Countryside Programme (FCP) is a 12-year, £25bn project to gradually reduce current farm subsidies and deliver “a renewed agricultural sector” that is more financially and environmentally sustainable in the long-term.
The Rural Payments Agency – a Defra arm’s-length body which oversees scores of financial support schemes for farmers, land owners and traders – is responsible for monitoring and compliance activities for FCP.
The processes involved in this work “rely on field visits, paperwork, and subjective assessments, leading to delayed evaluations, increased administrative burdens, and only capture a small percentage of the entire population”, according to a newly published commercial notice.
In order to reform and replace these procedures, the RPA is inviting bids from providers that can deliver “an advanced technological solution capable of streamlining national monitoring processes”.
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The agency wishes to deploy technology that can reduce the need for on-the-ground inspection by using satellite image data “to identify farm habitats [and] monitor land use and cover changes with respect to farming activities”, the notice says.
The system should be equipped to “ingest imagery sources and other data from other RPA and Defra Group systems” and also enable front-line staff to “ to utilise the supplier’s solution in the field and add their own imagery sources and ground truth data for a land parcel”.
RPA anticipates that its chosen supplier will be appointed to an initial five-year contract – plus potential extensions of up to five additional years in total. If the engagement runs to its full decade-long term, the agency expects to spend up to £21.3m, inclusive of VAT.
The deal will be awarded via the Space-Enabled and Geospatial Services framework, which features a range of firms “that can provide remote geospatial, locational, communication and sensing capabilities”.
Bids are open until 11 March.
