Running a large-scale soil health initiative is no simple task; coordinating dozens, sometimes hundreds, of farms, each with different sizes, different needs, and different levels of engagement; farmers need to show up, complete the right tests, at the right time, on the right fields; and you need visibility across all of it, without being on the ground yourself.
That’s exactly the challenge DEFA, the Department of Environment, Food & Agriculture on the Isle of Man, faced when they launched their Soil Health Initiative (SHI); a programme designed to help Manx farmers assess and improve their soil health and farm resilience. For the past two years, they’ve partnered with Soilmentor to make it work.
A ready-made framework for your soil health initiative
One of the biggest early hurdles for any organisation is getting farmers to engage with soil testing in the first place; if the process feels overwhelming, farmers won’t do it.
Soilmentor removes that barrier; its Regen Indicators provide a structured, scientifically-grounded framework that organisations can map their requirements directly onto. For the SHI, DEFA had each farmer choose 4 from 10 Regen Indicators to monitor, with step-by-step instructions available directly in the app, even without phone signal. This meant that farmers could get on with their recording while they were already out in the fields.
A compelling outcome we’ve seen already is that the farmers are genuinely excited by it:
“Soilmentor has actually been something I’ve been interested in for years. I was going to buy my own subscription, and then when I heard that I could get it for free through the Soil Health Initiative, even better!”
– David Cooil, Ballagawne Farm
“It’s going to be really beneficial once we get going with it, and it definitely makes you think in a different way. We’re hoping that if we get everything singing and dancing, that Soilmentor will help us become more profitable. It’s also obviously better for the environment and wildlife too, and that’s going to be key going forward for the general public’s perception of farmers. It’s a good way of making people think differently.”
– Vicky Sloane-Masson, Ballacricket Farm
“Previously, I had dug holes and looked at the soil but that information was never really stored anywhere or recorded. I would have information stored on files in the computer or in filing cabinets; that’s the beauty of it, that anyone who is working with us at Baljean can have access to that data, out in the field or wherever. That’s the biggest benefit I see for my farming business going forward.”
– Ean Parsons, Baljean Farm
The statistics also speak for themselves: in 2025, 80% of the Soil Health Initiative participant farmers recorded rooting depth scores, and 95% recorded earthworm counts. In the same year, a total of over 17,000 earthworms were counted, and over 2000 birds were recorded in Soilmentor.
Full visibility across every farm, from one Dashboard
When you’re overseeing hundreds of farms, you can’t afford to chase individual updates; you need a single place that tells you, at a glance, how your initiative is progressing.
Soilmentor’s Organisation Dashboard gives you exactly that. From one view, you can see how many farms are actively recording, how many fields have had data collected, and how usage is trending across your entire programme. Drill deeper, and you can see each individual farm’s activity levels, when they last recorded, and even browse photos uploaded from the field, keeping you connected to what’s happening on the ground.
This kind of visibility transforms how an organisation can operate. This way, you can identify farms that are falling behind early, intervene proactively, and keep your initiative on track.
Solving mass coordination with Progress Tracking
How do you ensure every single farmer knows exactly what they need to do, when they need to do it, especially when requirements vary by farm size or payment tier? Spreadsheets break down, email chains get ignored, and phone calls don’t scale.
Soilmentor solves this with a customised Progress Report, built directly into each farm’s account. For the SHI, this report shows each farmer precisely which initiative criteria they’ve met and which they still need to complete, tailored to their specific farm size and target payment tier. There’s no ambiguity, no confusion, and no need for your team to answer the same questions repeatedly.
Reconnecting Farmers to Their Soils
Engagement metrics matter, but the real measure of a successful initiative is whether it changes how farmers think about their land. Soilmentor does much more than just collect data; it creates moments of discovery that lead farmers back to their intuition and relationship with soil.
“When we carried out our soil tests, we were surprised to find that each field had a completely different set of results, despite being next to each other. One of our fields had very high carbon stocks, over 300 t/ha, but it’s a relatively unproductive field crop wise. Compare this to the field below, which only had around 130 t/ha in carbon stocks. The only difference in management between these two fields is that the first field was planted with peas about 15 years ago.”
– Neil Masson, Ballacricket Farm
“This was the moment when my mindset on Soilmentor began to change a bit. I thought to myself, ‘actually, I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t been using Soilmentor.'”
– Ean Parsons, Baljean Farm
That shift, from reluctant participant to engaged steward, is what makes an initiative truly successful and impactful in the long-term.
Ready to bring Soilmentor to your initiative? Whether you’re launching a new soil health programme or scaling an existing one, we’d love to show you how Soilmentor can provide the framework, the visibility, and the farmer engagement your organisation needs. Get in touch with our team on info@vidacycle.com to find out more, or book a demo below.
