Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) has announced it has struck a three-year deal with a new provider of on-farm production recording and benchmarking services for Scottish pig producers.

As part of the agreement, AgroSoft Ltd., which is the UK’s leading supplier of management software to pig farmers, will make its specialised software available to all Scottish pig farmers.

The firm will also provide quarterly industry benchmarking data to QMS, which will be shared with all participating farmers.

AgroSoft Ltd’s new contract adds two new iOS and Android-compatible mobile apps to enable producers to easily record breeding and feeding herd data in real-time, providing valuable insight into individual sow history, pig movements and everyday tasks across the herd.

It’s hoped the technology will improve the timeliness of decision-making on-farm whilst also reducing duplication of effort, as data only has to be entered once.

Commenting on the announcement, James Nesling, managing director of AgroSoft Ltd, said: “We are delighted to be working with QMS and Scottish pig farmers by providing access to our management software and through the provision of quarterly benchmarking data.

“We have been providing business management software to the UK pig industry since 1999 and backed by our parent company AgroVision, continue to develop innovative solutions so farmers can benefit from the latest technology.

“This new agreement with QMS means that we can continue to provide market-leading software and management information to Scottish pig farmers, helping the industry to maximise efficiency and business performance.”

Increasing sustainability and productivity

Allan Ward, pig specialist at QMS, added: “The provision of the AgroSoft production recording and benchmarking software package enables Scottish pig producers to increase their sustainability and productivity through the utilisation of weekly inputted data, which provides various weekly and monthly reports.

“This is funded nationally by QMS, and in the North East of Scotland as part of a wider programme for 2020-2021 by QMS and Opportunity North East (ONE).

“These reports show areas for improvement and management changes. The anonymous benchmarking element allows producers to see how well they are doing against other producers for all the main key performance indicators used within the industry.”