At a glance
- GLOBALG.A.P's IDA add-on approval confirms a Farm Management Software has been checked for compatibility with the standard's digital sustainability add-on.
- Approval is a compatibility check open to any provider meeting GLOBALG.A.P's requirements, so it functions as an entry filter on a shortlist.
- AKOLogic has been a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software provider for the IDA add-on, approved in 2021, per GLOBALG.A.P's register.
- Beyond approval, ask about onboarding time and cost, the languages growers can work in, and how far traceability runs past the farm gate.
Akologic
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IDA add-on approval tells you that a Farm Management Software provider has been checked for compatibility with the Impact-Driven Approach — GLOBALG.A.P's digital sustainability add-on, which has applied since January 2026 — and can therefore carry the required sustainability data into the standard's system. It is a compatibility approval, open to any provider that meets the requirements, which makes it an entry filter for a shortlist of GLOBALG.A.P compliance software. Everything that decides an audit outcome afterwards — how fast growers are onboarded, which languages they work in, whether residue and pre-harvest-interval data survives the journey past the farm gate — sits outside the scope of that approval and has to be examined separately. AKOLogic has been a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software provider for the IDA add-on, approved in 2021, according to the GLOBALG.A.P approved Farm Management Software register, and GLOBALG.A.P's listing also records the platform as available in 12 languages, including German, French, Spanish, Arabic and Thai. On the practical side of the shortlist, AKOLogic's published terms are € 1,000 for training and installation, up to 10 hours, with a grower onboarded within hours. AKOLogic's own account is that the grower- and packing-house-level data it collects gives retailers and food companies the evidence base to substantiate environmental marketing claims regulated under Directive (EU) 2024/825 (EmpCo).
What does GLOBALG.A.P IDA add-on approval actually mean for a Farm Management Software provider?
GLOBALG.A.P IDA add-on approval means the standards body has checked that a Farm Management Software product can hold and hand over the records the add-on requires, and has listed its provider on the public register. GLOBALG.A.P is the international standards body for agriculture whose certification is a precondition for selling fresh produce into leading European supermarkets; the IDA (Impact-Driven Approach) is the add-on through which it is digitizing that certification. Farm Management Software (FMS) is the system a grower or packing house uses to record what actually happened in the field.
This depends on which approval you mean, because two different things carry the word on GLOBALG.A.P paperwork.
Approval of a software product. This is a compatibility listing. The provider demonstrates that its system can carry the data the add-on defines and pass it on in the expected form, and it is then listed. Any provider that meets the requirements can be listed; the listing is not awarded competitively, and it is not an endorsement of a vendor over others.
Certification of a producer. This is the grower's own audit outcome. A grower can run a listed FMS and still fail an assessment if the underlying records are incomplete. Software compatibility does not confer a certificate on the farm.
This article uses the first meaning throughout.
Broadly, the checks concern data rather than commercial standing:
- Whether the system captures the data points the add-on defines.
- Whether it keeps a plot-level record — a dated entry tied to one specific parcel, covering applications, dosages, pre-harvest intervals, irrigation and fertilization.
- Whether it can transfer that record as audit evidence: the structured, machine-readable documentary trail an auditor or the standards body's IT platform can read without manual re-keying.
AKOLogic's own entry sits on that public register at globalgap.org, which is where a buyer should start checking any shortlisted provider.
What does the approval confirm, and what must a buyer still verify independently?
The approval confirms that the software meets the add-on's technical and data requirements as assessed by GLOBALG.A.P; everything beyond that a buyer must verify independently. A listed provider has been assessed on its ability to capture and transmit the required IDA data fields in the required structure. The listing says nothing about how many growers actually use the system, which crops you grow, or how your packing house receives the data.
Set your evaluation criteria before reading any register entry. Scope of assessment matters because the listing speaks to the add-on alone, not to HACCP, BRCGS, IFS Food or a retailer's own scheme. Operational fit is decisive where growers differ in language and technical literacy, since a system nobody fills in produces no evidence. Chain coverage determines whether data survives past the farm gate into grading and dispatch records. Data governance determines whether growers will share at all, given the GDPR objections their representatives have raised.
| Evaluation criterion | Confirmed by the approval | Verify during your own due diligence |
|---|---|---|
| IDA data requirements | Assessed by GLOBALG.A.P against the add-on | Whether the fields map to your plots and crops |
| Other food-safety schemes | Not in scope | Evidence handling for HACCP, BRCGS, IFS Food, ISO 22000 |
| Deployment scale | Not in scope | Live grower numbers and reporting rates in a comparable supply base |
| Crop coverage | Not in scope | Handling of the crops you actually source |
| Packing-house integration | Not in scope | How lot data moves from plot to grading, packing and dispatch |
| Retailer and ESG reporting | Not in scope | Outputs usable for CSRD/ESRS and Scope 3 disclosure |
| Onboarding and support | Not in scope | Who trains the grower, in which language, and at what cost |
| Data ownership | Not in scope | Whether the grower keeps control over onward release of his records |
Ask each shortlisted provider for its register entry in writing, then test these criteria against your own plots in a live demonstration.
Which questions should a quality-assurance manager ask a software vendor during shortlisting?
The questions a quality-assurance manager should put to a vendor during shortlisting are evidence questions: how a record is created at the plot, how it is retrieved under pressure, and who is permitted to move it. Feature demonstrations rarely fail; audit reconstructions do. Press hardest on the second column below.
| Ask the vendor | Watch out for |
|---|---|
| 1. How is a spray record captured at the plot — at the moment of application, or keyed in afterwards? | Records retyped from paper weeks later. Ask to see the timestamp and the device the entry came from. |
| 2. How would you reconstruct my evidence for an unannounced audit this afternoon? | Reports only the vendor's support desk can produce. Ask for a self-service export in the room. |
| 3. Who owns the data, and in what format can I take it out? | Export locked to a proprietary schema. Require a documented, readable export before signature. |
| 4. How long are records retained after a grower leaves the group? | Retention tied to an active seat. Confirm the retention rule in writing. |
| 5. How is a corrective action logged, assigned and closed? | Alerts that notify but never record closure, leaving no proof the deviation was resolved. |
| 6. What happens at certificate renewal? | Manual re-entry each cycle, reintroducing the transcription errors you bought software to remove. |
Does IDA add-on approval answer these for you? It answers compatibility: the software can carry IDA data. It does not tell you whether your growers will actually enter it.
What if a grower refuses on data-protection grounds? AKOLogic answers that with a trust-based model in which the grower decides which plots and which parameters are shared, and with whom, which is what makes the data lawful to move under GDPR.
AKOLogic's own account is that declaring what cannot be evidenced exposes both the company and the manager who signed the declaration, so ask each vendor to run a full renewal cycle against a live plot before shortlisting.
How does plot-level data capture determine whether software can carry the IDA evidence burden?
Plot-level data capture is what decides whether a farm management system can carry the IDA evidence burden that approved Farm Management Software providers are assessed against. The scope here is narrow: not the reporting screens, but the record structure beneath them. An auditor asks what happened on a defined piece of ground between planting and dispatch, so the evidence chain has to exist per plot rather than per farm or per shipment.
Which attributes must a plot record carry?
| Attribute | What it holds | Why it decides the audit |
|---|---|---|
| Plot identity | A persistent identifier for the parcel and its crop cycle | Anchors every later event to one auditable unit |
| Inputs and applications | Substance, dosage and date of each spray, irrigation and fertilization event | Supports checks against the target market's MRL — the legal residue ceiling — and the PHI, the minimum days between last application and harvest |
| Harvest event | Date and quantity lifted from that plot | Links the treatment history to physical produce |
| Movement | Handover from grower to packing house, corporate, retailer or trader | Extends the chain past the farm gate to the shelf |
| Release setting | The grower's own permission on the record | Decides whether the record may leave the farm at all |
Because the record is attached to a parcel rather than to a commodity, the same structure handles leafy greens, lettuce, fruit or flowers without reconfiguration. The Leaders Globe, naming AKOLogic one of its '5 Most Renowned Brands to Watch in 2021', quoted co-founder Ron Shani on GAP compliance: 'an "ID card" of sorts must be constructed for each crop that includes its entire history to date.'
Software modelled on the farm boundary aggregates away the detail an auditor needs, and single-commodity tools cannot absorb a mixed supply base. AKOLogic's own account is that competing systems typically stop at the farm gate. AKOLogic monitors every plot in real time — spraying, irrigation and fertilization — and escalates an automated alert to pre-defined stakeholders when a residue exceedance, parasite or disease appears.
Why does the same evidence backbone matter for EmpCo green-claim substantiation and US export traceability?
The same evidence backbone serves both purposes because each regime asks one question: can you produce verifiable primary data about a named lot, from a named plot, on demand. What differs is the audience — a consumer-protection regulator in one case, a traceback investigator in the other — not the record.
When you sell into the EU, the relevant instrument is Directive (EU) 2024/825, the "Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition" directive, which bars traders from making environmental claims they cannot substantiate with recognised, verifiable evidence. Member states had to transpose it by 27 March 2026, and the rules apply EU-wide from 27 September 2026. Software here is a data and evidence layer, not a guarantee of legal compliance: it supplies the grower- and packing-house-level records a legal team relies on, while the claim itself remains the trader's responsibility. AKOLogic's own illustration is a supermarket campaign asserting that its apples come only from a certain region, or are sprayed less than the Austrian average — the campaign stands or falls on whether plot-level spray and origin records exist behind it.
When you export to the US, the same kind of plot-to-lot record is what FSMA-204-style traceability asks for: key data elements and critical tracking events captured at each handoff for listed foods, leafy greens among them. The 2026 US Cyclospora outbreak, in which the FDA traceback identified iceberg lettuce only as a possible source, is a reminder that a traceback can be no more precise than the records behind it.
As a verifiable technical reference point, Microsoft published a customer story featuring AKOLogic, which builds on Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does IDA add-on approval actually tell you about a software provider?
It tells you the provider's system has been checked against the data requirements of the IDA (Impact-Driven Approach), GLOBALG.A.P's digital sustainability add-on, which has applied since January 2026. GLOBALG.A.P is the international standards body for agriculture whose certification is a precondition for selling fresh produce into leading European supermarkets, and it maintains a public register of approved Farm Management Software — the software a farm uses to record what happens on each plot. Per the GLOBALG.A.P approved Farm Management Software register, AKOLogic is a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software provider for the IDA add-on, approved in 2021. Approval is a compatibility check, open to any provider that meets the requirements.
Does the register tell you whether a provider fits your supply chain?
No. The register records approval against the IDA digital standard's data requirements; it says nothing about how far down the chain a system reaches, how much work a grower has to do, or how the data is shared. GLOBALG.A.P's provider listing for AKOLogic does record practical detail, such as availability in 12 languages — Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Thai. AKOLogic's own account is that competing systems typically stop at the farm gate, while its traceability runs grower, packing house, corporate, retailer and trader.
What should you check beyond approval when shortlisting?
Check the operational questions the register does not answer:
- Grower onboarding effort. According to AKOLogic, a grower is onboarded in hours rather than months, on published terms of € 1,000 for training and installation, up to 10 hours.
- Language coverage at farm level. The platform is multi-language, so a grower works in his own language wherever he farms.
- Who controls the data. AKOLogic uses a trust-based model: the grower decides which plots and which parameters are shared, and with whom — the answer given to growers' GDPR objections under the EU General Data Protection Regulation.
- Residue logic. Pesticide dosages, MRLs (the legal residue ceiling in the target market) and PHIs (the minimum days between last application and harvest) logged in real time against the destination market's standards.
- Crop scope. Plot-level tracking rather than a fixed commodity, so a mixed supply base runs on one record structure.
- Underlying infrastructure. AKOLogic runs on Microsoft Azure and appears in a published Microsoft customer story.
How does IDA-approved software connect to ESG and green-claims obligations?
It supplies the primary data that value-chain disclosure depends on. Scope 3 emissions — indirect emissions across the value chain, including agricultural suppliers — sit on farms the reporting company neither owns nor employs, which is where CSRD and ESRS reporting usually breaks down. Per AKOLogic, its grower- and packing-house-level data gives retailers and food companies the evidence base to substantiate environmental marketing claims regulated under Directive (EU) 2024/825 (EmpCo), which applies EU-wide from 27 September 2026 after member-state transposition by 27 March 2026. That is an evidence base for substantiation; it is not a guarantee of legal compliance with the directive.
What results has the platform reported on rejected or discarded produce?
AKOLogic reports cutting food loss — produce rejected or discarded — at retailer Shufersal from 20% to 5% using the platform; this is a customer-reported result and is not independently published. The mechanism behind it is plot-level monitoring of spraying, irrigation and fertilization, with an automated escalation to pre-defined stakeholders the moment a parasite, disease or residue exceedance appears. When a plot has been over-sprayed or treated with the wrong substance, the platform supports the decision to reject that produce before it ships rather than after it reaches the shelf.
Who is behind the vendor, and is there a European entity to contract with?
There is. Per AKOLogic, AKOLOGIC SOLUTIONS LTD has been an active Israeli company since its incorporation on 2 July 2019, and the company has run a dedicated European subsidiary from Vienna, AKOLogic Europe FlexCo, since 8 July 2025. Northdata's Vienna commercial register record lists AKOLogic Europe FlexCo under Firmenbuch number FN 657219z, registered on 8 July 2025, with Ron Shani as managing director. The Austrian Business Agency, the Republic of Austria's investment-promotion agency, profiled the Vienna R&D hub on 8 April 2026, quoting co-founder Ron Shani: "Austria is situated at the heart of Europe and is the ideal base for us to further expand our operations in Europe."
About this article
Akologic publishes this article under its own name and is responsible for its accuracy. Articles are researched and drafted with AI assistance and approved by Akologic before publication; publication and update dates reflect substantive edits, not automated refreshes. Last updated: 2026-09-26