“After working in the food and agricultural industry for more than a decade across procurement, responsible sourcing, and sustainability, I’ve repeatedly encountered the same issue: agricultural data is far too complex, fragmented, and unreliable to meet today’s demands for sustainability reporting and Scope 3 emissions management.
If a company wants to understand the environmental and social impact of its supply chain, the process quickly becomes overwhelming. Data is scattered across multiple stakeholders and systems, often incomplete, unverifiable, or inconsistent. Supply chains are long, reporting requirements keep expanding, and verification adds yet another layer of difficulty.
For farmers, the tools available are often complicated, time-consuming, and rarely designed with their realities in mind. Many do not work across different farm sizes, languages, or literacy levels. The result is a system that is fragmented, inefficient, and deeply frustrating for everyone involved.”
– Charis Aherne, Head of Agricultural Impact and Strategy, Climeaction
Where the effort goes
- Procurement and sustainability teams spend significant time piecing together reports, verifying data, and answering customer requests.
- Farmers are expected to navigate digital tools that don’t reflect their context or capacity.
- Manufacturers face mounting Scope 3 challenges but lack the verified, farm-level data required to respond.
It’s a system that drains energy on all sides without delivering the clarity and trust that stakeholders demand.
Growing data requirements
Adding to this complexity are the growing data requirements organizations must meet. Frameworks such as:
- CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)
- CSDDD (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive)
- TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures)
- CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project)
have raised the bar on transparency and accountability. Supplier surveys, ESG assessments, and detailed emissions reporting are now part of everyday operations.
Each of these frameworks depends on accurate, verified agricultural data, yet that data is rarely available in a usable or consistent form. The expectations are clear, but the infrastructure to meet them is not.
More fragmented than most people realize
“From my own experience, the reality of how agricultural data is managed globally is even more fragmented than most people realize. The same metric may sit in dozens of spreadsheets across regions, languages, and departments. In some cases, it doesn’t exist at all, forcing teams to estimate numbers simply to meet reporting deadlines.
These estimations, while sometimes unavoidable, introduce inaccuracy and uncertainty into Scope 3 emissions reports, ESG disclosures, and sustainability strategies. This patchwork approach undermines credibility, reduces confidence in the numbers, and limits the industry’s ability to drive genuine progress.”
– Charis Aherne, Head of Agricultural Impact and Strategy, Climeaction
What the sector needs
The food and agriculture sector urgently needs a scalable, trusted solution that works for everyone, from smallholder farmers to global manufacturers. Without integrated data management systems, even well-intentioned companies are left relying on assumptions rather than verified results. This makes it nearly impossible to demonstrate real impact or withstand customer and investor scrutiny.
How VSAg works
VSAg removes the complexity of agricultural data gathering, making it simple, accessible, and adaptable anywhere in the world. Whether a farmer is working with limited connectivity or managing a large, data-driven operation, VSAg is designed to be usable by anyone, regardless of language or literacy level.
For manufacturers, it delivers verified, trustworthy agricultural data that can be confidently used in sustainability reporting, carbon accounting, and Scope 3 emissions disclosure. Most importantly, VSAg turns data collection from a burden into a tool for progress, connecting companies to a true reflection of their impact.
That is exactly why we built VSAg
The food and agriculture sector needs better data not just to survive today’s regulatory and market demands, but to thrive in the future. Having experienced the pain points firsthand over the last decade, I believe the only way forward is through solutions that prioritize simplicity, trust, and global accessibility.
That is exactly why we built VSAg.
Where farm data does not exist, teams estimate to meet reporting deadlines. Those estimates carry into Scope 3 reports and ESG disclosures, and confidence in the numbers drops with them.
