From next year, new EU rules will require companies to prove that commodities such as cocoa, coffee, and palm oil were produced with responsible practices. They’ll have to provide digital proof of their practices, which few smallholders are currently able to do. 

The International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have teamed up to create a suite of free, public tools that farmers anywhere in the world can use. 

Here’s how these tools are already being put into use in Kenya.

Long Miles Coffee buys their beans directly from Kenyan farmers. To sell their coffee to European buyers, they have to comply with the Regulation on Deforestation-free Products, known as EUDR. 

Farmers do not have the resources to do that. To show how the digital tools work, ITC trained Kenyan agritech firm Agrisolutions Enterprises to use the new digital tools. Palladium Group, a global advisory firm, funded Agrisolutions Enterprises for the pilot project. That allowed Agrisolutions to mobilize 60 agents across Kenya to collect farm-level data from over 6,000 producers.

‘Smallholder farmers owning their data isn't just good practice - it's essential to their dignity,’ said Ben Carlson, who founded Long Miles Coffee. ‘As a coffee producer working directly with these farmers, this farmer-controlled traceability gives us complete confidence that our 2025 launch of Long Miles Kenya from Mount Elgon, Western Kenya, is genuinely forest-friendly and community-centred.’ 

Right now, it feels like we could lose market access. Having a place to update and validate my data, and show buyers I am compliant, is priceless.

John Cheptais

Director of family-owned Fajoro Coffee Estate

Kenya

By leveraging digital public infrastructure, we’re proving there’s a better way - one that respects producers and keeps them at the centre of the process.

Samuel Thuo

CEO of Agrisolutions Enterprises

Kenya

We must reframe technology and data into shareable public assets: governed locally, valued globally. That means moving away from extractive compliance models and toward inclusive frameworks where producers have ownership, voice, and benefit from their participation.

Kristian Doolan

Founder of Bridge.ong

The agents used the FAO Open Foris Ground app to record detailed information about farm plots. The app maps plots, registers farm details, and gathers sustainability-relevant data – all offline. 

‘The Ground App is a fantastic tool for companies like ours. It’s open, easy to deploy, and fits the realities of working in the field,’ said Samuel Thuo, CEO of Agrisolutions Enterprises. ‘Too often we’re approached with expensive, closed systems that shift the burden onto farmers and require them to give up ownership of their data.’

Working through a model of inclusion

The effort was not only a technical exercise, but also a model of inclusion: training ensured that cooperatives and farmers understood what data was being collected, how it would be used, and that ownership of the data remains with them. 

‘When I was first told about the data collection, I was worried - who would use this information and why?’ said John Cheptais, Director of family- owned Fajoro Coffee Estate in Chaeptais. ‘But learning that I would have a copy of my own data, that it would sit with me in the ITC platform, and I could choose who to share it with - that changed everything.’

To identify potential deforestation risks, the data is being processed through WHISP (What’s in That Plot?). FAO created this monitoring and risk analysis engine to cross-references multiple datasets, looking at remote sensing, tree cover, historical land use, and national baselines. The result is a ‘convergence of evidence’ on whether a plot is at risk of deforestation, a critical step under the EUDR. 

That will allow Long Miles Coffee to keep selling to their European client, Johan & Nyström, which must submit EUDR compliance declarations. 

‘We’ve worked with Long Miles Coffee for many years and deeply value their transparent, farmer-focused approach,’ said Jonas Hult, who’s in charge of green coffee buying at Johan & Nyström. ‘We fully support this bottom-up model for compliance. It’s the only way to ensure EUDR doesn’t become a barrier for farmers but instead an opportunity for them to gain recognition and access to better markets.’ 

So that more buyers can find verified producers, cooperative or exporters like Long Miles, ITC created the Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway. Producers can gain visibility, retain control over their data, and demonstrate compliance while benefiting from market access.

These solutions are not standalone; they already integrate with global systems like AgStack, a Linux Foundation project that assigns Geographical IDs to plots of land. This allows traceability to be more standardized, interoperable, and verifiable across platforms. 

Shifting data costs away from farmers 

To keep down costs for farmers, Kristian Doolan from Bridge.ong is looking at creating a system where buyers pay a small fee to keep supplier data updated and validated. 

‘Data has become the new currency in sustainable trade but we’re still asking the poorest to pay the highest price,’ said Doolan. ‘Compliance systems that ignore producer costs at best are not sustainable and could risk becoming controlling or exploitive.’

ITC and FAO’s joint efforts represent more than a technical fix. They are contributing to laying the foundation for a digital public infrastructure so no one is left behind in the global push against deforestation. 

‘The Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway puts smallholders' interests at the centre,’ said Mathieu Lamolle, the EUDR Focal Point at ITC. ‘It enables all supply chain actors as well as public and private data partners to share, validate, and verify data. That ensures that all efforts are made visible, coordinated, rewarded, and aligned with sustainability standards and regulations.’