diff --git a/app/views/spree/admin/overview/_version.html.haml b/app/views/spree/admin/overview/_version.html.haml
index 729d0a3fe8..d9f5076ddc 100644
--- a/app/views/spree/admin/overview/_version.html.haml
+++ b/app/views/spree/admin/overview/_version.html.haml
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 %a{href:"https://github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork/releases", target: "_blank", title: t('.view_all_releases')}
   =# Show the latest tag. If there are commits since the tag, show number of commits and an identifier. If the working tree is dirty, show 'modified'.
-  = `git describe --tags --dirty=-modified`
+  = Rails.application.config.x.git_version
diff --git a/config/application.rb b/config/application.rb
index c3cb2db1c5..bb13b4dd50 100644
--- a/config/application.rb
+++ b/config/application.rb
@@ -34,6 +34,9 @@ end
 
 module Openfoodnetwork
   class Application < Rails::Application
+    # Store a description of the current version, with linebreak trimmed
+    config.x.git_version = `git describe --tags --dirty=-modified`.strip
+
     config.after_initialize do
       # We need this here because the test env file loads before the Spree engine is loaded
       Spree::Core::Engine.routes.default_url_options[:host] = ENV["SITE_URL"] if Rails.env == 'test'