Farmers interested in producing and trading energy crops for feedstock could be helped by a new IT management platform.

Ontario-based New Energy Farms, a developer of the energy crop Miscanthus in North America, has teamed up with Muddy Boots Software to provide this new service to the energy crop market.

According to the companies, the platform will enable direct trading of energy crops or arable biomass from farmer to end user and allow users to work with large numbers of farmers directly through an aggregation system. Other benefits include accurate energy balance and audit reporting for the whole year or even each load, energy crop yield predictions and allowing a secure route to market for plant breeders to commercialize and license new cultivars.