We’ve interviewed 5 fresh produce farm auditors for tips on how to sail through your next fresh produce farm audit. Here’s a summary of the most common pitfalls and some tips to help you ace your next audit.
Farm Managers are the busiest people we know, and the last thing you want to spend time on are audits. Preparing for an audit. Sitting in an audit. Follow-up after an audit. That said, the idea of a non-conformance result can keep any good farm manager up at night.
Our team at Farmable interviewed 5 different fresh produce auditors to hear first-hand what the biggest challenges are in passing a farm audit.
Top 5 Challenges in Fresh Produce Farm Audits:
1. Missing documentation. Where is that driver’s spray certificate?
This seems like a no-brainer, but it was at the top of the list for all the auditors we talked to. The amount of time spent searching for documents to offer objective evidence of compliance is the biggest time waster for both the auditor and the farm manager. Keeping an auditor waiting while you dig up missing paperwork is frustrating for everyone.
2. Missing data. How do I know this harvest interval was maintained?
Even when all the correct documents appear to be gathered, auditors consistently find missing data points from farm reports.
The top 3 missing data points are here:
- Harvest date
- Harvest interval
- Wind speed during crop applications
3. Connecting your chemical applications or fertiliser applications to a recommendation from your agronomist.
Your advisor’s handwritten recommendations are a nightmare for auditors. Often barely legible, it’s difficult to confidently link these notes to operational work on the farm in a credible way.
4. Soil Management. Specifically demonstrating that a fertilizer application and its recommendation is connected to a soil analysis result.
The usual culprit here is having soil analysis completed in a timely manner and maintaining the records of the analysis so they can be linked to soil nutrient planning.
5. Spray Equipment. Evidence of calibration and correct servicing.
These details are notoriously difficult to find or are incomplete.
5 Tips to Avoid Non-Conformance
So now that we are clear on the common pitfalls.
What can you do to try to avoid them?
1. Missing documents: Now, in all fairness, there is a lot of documentation being requested from farms these days, and the list is getting longer every season.
Of course, being organized helps, and choosing a farm management system will support organizing your farm data. However, our auditor friends highly recommend using the templates or checklists each certification body offers to help farms prepare for their audits. GLOBALG.A.P., for example, offers an online checklist builder to help farms with exactly this.
2. Missing data: There is no sugar coating this one. The best way to ensure you have completed data in your farm records is to use a smart farm management tool that will automatically populate the maximum possible amount of data for you. At Farmable, we automate the population of harvest date, harvest interval, and weather at the time of a job (including wind speed), so you never have to spend a calorie worrying about missing these data points.
One Fresh produce auditor, came across a Farmable report in a recent UK Certification audit and shared,
“ All the data was in one place, all I had to do was look at the screen”
3. Linking recommendations to crop treatments: Using a digital seasonal planner or having digital recommendations from an agronomist makes it easier to maintain the link to completed spray jobs. If your current audit obligations aren’t motivating enough to change the habits on your farm, remember that electronic records for crop applications will become a requirement in 2026 in Europe. And globally, integrated pest management (IPM) is increasingly required as a work process – which means documenting why a crop application was used and who recommended that application will become essential data points to capture.
4. Soil Management: Make a plan early in the season with your advisor on when soil sample results will be needed. Soil sampling is difficult to automate, but teams like FarmLabs have been working hard to improve the data management around soil sampling and enable the link between soil analysis and operational decisions on the farm.
5. Equipment Calibration: This can be a difficult one to track. As a starting point, you can find all the dates for your latest equipment inspections in the Farmable App under Equipment details. You can also find the relevant registration number and spray rate/calibration setting for your machinery set here.
The Future of Farm Audits
Depending on the certification being audited, the average audit time can range between 4-8 hours, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. During our interviews, auditors mentioned that on occasion, it was possibile to complete a farm audit with just a 30-minute site visit.
So what’s the secret to a 30-minute farm audit?
Upfront documentation. When farms have data prepared in advance that can be submitted to an auditor, it saves time for both the auditor and the farm manager. Auditors appreciate this preview of your farm and can be much better prepared for an on-farm audit, minimizing the time they spend inside the farm gate.
Encouraging trends.
In support of providing compliance documentation in advance of an audit, different certifications are offering online portals or processes for farm managers to submit reports prior to an auditor arriving on site. These include the following:
- GLOBALG.A.P.
- Red Tractor (UK)
- Freshcare (AUS)
GlobalG.A.P. is even offering API connections for farm management tools for their IDA certification. That’s an inspiring development. In the future, a farm manager could elect to share their farm data directly with a certification organisation, like GlobalG.A.P., and receive feedback on their status directly through their preferred farm management tool.
This makes a lot of sense. It saves time for the farm manager and the auditor.
This doesn’t mean the end of in-person farm audits. Those will likely remain for the foreseeable future but technology will enable these audit processes to be more efficient and can remove much of the burden currently placed on the farm managers shoulders.
How can Farmable Help?
Missing documentation? Farmable is a user-friendly farm management app that organizes your farm data in a way that automates key reports such as spray and fertilizer logs, production reports, product inventory reportings and even timesheets.
Missing data? The Farmable app has been designed to minimize data entry by the Farm Manager and automatically populate as much data as possible. We integrate with local product lists so your records are pre-populated with product names, application rates, and product restrictions. Weather data is captured automatically, so you will never miss documenting wind speed during a spray job again.
Agronomist recommendations? Farmable’s workflow will automatically link crop treatment recommendations from your advisor to the relevant applications completed in the field, keeping you compliant with integrated pest management .
In short, Farmable is a user-friendly tool that can speed up your farm audits and simplify your compliance documentation.
The FarmablePro package for compliance costs just 99 EURO/farm per year and packs a generous return on investment. Automated farm reports, less deskwork, less headaches, and efficient farm audits. Unlimited hectares, unlimited users and you can try it for free for 14 days.
Oh, and your auditor will thank you.
