British arable farmers are debating the benefits and drawbacks of moving grain passports online.

A decision is to be made towards the end of the year on whether growers should embrace the move away from paper.

The Scottish Farmer spoke to Aberdeenshire arable farmer Scott Campbell, of Kirkton of Kinellar Farm, over his concerns. He said: “We have beens discussing it at our NFUS committee and had a show of hands at our local meeting and no-one put up their hands to support digital passports.

"There are a lot of businesses which could struggle with switching to digital. Firstly I know a lot of farms don’t get decent 4G signal or Wi-Fi so there is a big issue being able to connect to send the information required. The other concern is what is going to happen with the information which is taken? A lot of that is commercially sensitive and we don’t know who will have access to it, or how it will be used.

“I had thought it might be an advantage if you were sending a number of loads of the same variety but it turns out you need to fill in separate forms individually. Put simply, the paper system is not failing, so if it is not broken, why fix it?" asked Mr Campbell.

“What I like about the paper passports is they are on an A4 sheet of paper which limits the amount of information which can be asked for. If it goes online, there is no limit to the amount of information they can ask for – they could add bells and whistles which we do not need. So much of the information is already in our annual audit so no need to duplicate.

“We don't mean to be dinosaurs and pushing away technology but I can't see much of an advantage. When you think of the smaller hauliers who used seasonal labour for drivers, who may not be tech savvy, there could be real issues with busy farmers are working round the clock during harvest and the back end. I would encourage all farmers to feed back to the union and particularly younger farmers to voice their opinion.”

The Scottish Farmer asked the head of farm economics at AHDB, Derek Carless, to answer each of these points of concern:

Wifi or 4G on farms may be too limited go digital -

System design means that data can be captured at collection points without wifi or 4G, however for the passport to be visible to delivery point intake staff, wifi or 4G will be needed soon after collection in order to submit the complete passport. The Shared Rural Network’s ongoing roll out will help address a lack of 4G in remote rural areas, over a time period similar to the proposed two year transition. This increase in coverage will further reduce the number of collection points with no 4G. More info on the SRN can be found here https://srn.org.uk/

Older farmers and smaller firms with seasonal staff could struggle with the technology -

Flexible system design will allow farmers to use a range of different technologies for passport completion. Desktop or laptop computers could be used in the farm or grainstore office if located close to the loading point. Alternatively smartphones or tablets could be used, or a combination of these. This flexibility means the system will be accessible to the vast majority of farmers and their staff. There will be a full range of help and support materials available from the start of the transition. There will be a telephone helpdesk available to support people to use the system and even to complete passports where necessary.

Concerns about what will happen to the information gathered as some of it is commercially sensitive -

Data entered onto a passport will only be visible to others involved in that load. No one else will have access to it. Each grower will be able to use their digital grain passport account to access data relating to all passports completed and this will provide records of the weight and quality of each load and also where each load was tipped.

Industry will oversee questions relating to data visibility through the creation of a data governance board. Industry’s view is that as a trusted, independent body AHDB is best placed to own and operate the DGP on behalf of industry if it chooses to go ahead. Funded by growers, processors and merchants, it is uniquely placed.

Although some have raised the possibility of the overall dataset held by a UK-wide digital passport system being used for the benefit of the whole industry, commercial data sensitivities mean that this has been ruled out at least for the first three years. This could be revisited by the data governance board if industry wishes, in future.

The inability to fill in a number of forms at the same time if the variety is the same -

Where a grower has a series of collections of the same crop coming up, the vast majority of the data can be completed across multiple passports, in one go, ahead of time. This just leaves the vehicle hygiene declarations and the previous load information to be captured at the collection point. This will be a significant efficiency over completing multiple paper passports manually one at a time.

And what about farmers' love of the A4 sheet of paper because it cannot become too long – and the fear that online forms could ask for lots more information -

One of the key objectives AHDB has been set is to digitise the current paper passport. There are no plans to introduce any new data requirements.