The Transformational Tech collection highlights Cisco’s grant recipients that use expertise to assist remodel the lives of people and communities. This weblog options Cisco’s partnership with Fairfood, a non-governmental group (NGO) based mostly within the Netherlands. If you have an interest in a deep dive on this partnership, please contact Sue-Lynn Hinson.
New analysis by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization exhibits that the world’s practically 500 million smallholder farmers produce round one third of the world’s meals provide. Yet a lot of them reside on lower than USD $2 per day and might barely feed and maintain their very own households. Fair and moral enterprise practices are a rising concern amongst shoppers; but many agri-food firms battle to construct model belief and show that they’re working sustainably, treating farmers and meals staff ethically and paying them a dwelling earnings.
Fairfood has developed a blockchain-based expertise platform known as Trace with assist from Cisco. Trace permits full transparency throughout the meals provide chain, and offers knowledge, proof, and insights with which firms can develop packages and methods to implement moral enterprise practices and enhance the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers and meals staff.
“The relationship between the buyer and the producer, to me, is the most important. It is
good to have this transparency inside the cooperative; to be able to show what we are
doing with the coffee, every step of the process. It helps build strong and dependable
relationships with buyers.”
—José Francisco Villada (Panchito), Coffee producer and co-founder of Capucas
Fairfood’s mission is to speed up change in the direction of truthful and sustainable meals worth chains, partnering with agri-food firms to develop progressive enterprise fashions that profit firms and cooperatives and allow truthful worth distribution fashions that result in larger incomes for smallholder farmers. Currently connecting greater than 300,000 farmers and their relations to the home and worldwide provide chains that form their future, Fairfood’s world operations span 17 international locations and various commodities associated to the cocoa, espresso, spice, horticultural and fruit industries.
Fairfood’s partnership director, Peter van der Linde, shares the non-profit’s expertise evolution and the way its partnership with Cisco has helped it make important developments in digital inclusion whereas defending knowledge privateness and safety and giving smallholder farmers management over their very own digital info.
What function does expertise play in Fairfood’s mission?
Technology and digital inclusion are key. Having expertise that may assist securely hint the product from farmer to shopper, finish to finish, is invaluable to bringing constructive change to truthful and moral meals sustainability, constructing model belief amongst shoppers by way of provide chain transparency, and serving to us scale to market. Getting everybody on board, from the farmers to the cooperatives, to the manufacturers, retailers, and shoppers, is significant to creating actual change.
Fairfood adopts a partnership worth chain strategy to traceability, forming knowledge partnerships alongside worldwide meals corridors that profit all events, with a robust concentrate on strengthening the place of farmers as a key a part of sustainability methods. Fairfood’s strategy is exclusive as a result of it’s targeted on system change and centered on each product traceability and publicly verifiable model guarantees that may be linked to particular person merchandise that add tangible worth within the industrial market and assist to construct shopper belief. And the technical infrastructure that’s backed by the partnership with Cisco is crucial.
How has the assist of Cisco contributed to Fairfood’s expertise improvement and the way crucial has this been in advancing your technique?
With the assist of Cisco, Fairfood has strengthened its farmer-centric traceability resolution that at the moment permits 46 firms to indicate precisely the place merchandise come from and share proof for model guarantees publicly, whereas enhancing farmers’ incomes. The partnership additionally allowed us to develop a data-secure NFC (Near Field Communication) card system together with a cell app for first consumers, that allows the event of economic observe data for farmers and group members who should not have a cellphone or a checking account. It is used to securely digitize proof of money funds offline, guaranteeing monetary transactions can solely be verified by the licensed customers.
In the markets Fairfood operates in, this idea shifts the ability again to farmers and group members, permitting them to confirm that funds meant for them are obtained, whereas guaranteeing they continue to be accountable for their very own knowledge. It additionally opens up the chance to make use of these data for monetary inclusion for farmers that should not have a checking account. “We are exploring ways in which these digital financial track records can be used for credit scoring to help secure basic loans for these farmers that were previously out of scope. It’s a massive opportunity with a lot of potential and benefit to both the unbanked farmers and financial institutions”.
What are a few of Fairfood’s accomplishments/wins within the business up to now?
Fairfood has a aim to enhance the livelihoods of 1 million folks by 2025. One of the methods we’re making strides to attain this aim is thru novel enterprise fashions. In 2022, Fairfood applied its farmer-centric traceability resolution with Verstegen Spices of their nutmeg provide chain from Indonesia, with a brand new incentive construction whereby farmers are paid a premium for top-quality product, and moreover compensated for offering digital verification of funds obtained. The program had two pathways of change: one geared toward demonstrating the enterprise case for absolutely traceable nutmeg merchandise, and the opposite targeted on showcasing the potential of incentives to assist structurally improve funds to farmers. The case received highlighted within the report ‘Towards a New Paradigm’ commissioned by USAID (DDI) and the Gates Foundation.
Watch a quick video about this system.
The report highlights that after the preliminary hybrid financing mannequin (public-private), key events within the worth chain are prepared to proceed to cowl the operating prices of the app/card system and maintain funds for each high quality and knowledge premiums. Farmer verified transaction data present that the standard and knowledge premiums continued to end in an roughly $100 improve in earnings per farmer per yr throughout the first yr after implementation (March 2022 – March 2023).
Learn how Trace is enabling full transparency for the availability chain.
What challenges/roadblocks does Fairfood nonetheless face?
One of the most important challenges Fairfood faces is to show the enterprise case for absolutely traceable merchandise, as an alternative of the market relying on present sustainability labels. We know that a few of these labels could be deceptive, and many don’t show that farmers are being paid pretty (regardless of shoppers considering that’s what these labels imply). So, bringing our farmer-centric traceability system and approaches to the forefront is vital to creating actual change in the direction of sustainable and moral meals provide chains, shopper consciousness, and model belief. It takes time for folks to actually perceive the ability of farm-to-fork traceability, however we’re starting to make inroads.
Another problem is with laws. Up till a number of years in the past, there was an absence of laws round moral and sustainable provide chains. We at the moment are seeing constructive change on this space throughout governments in a number of international locations and that is serving to us to select up steam in firms the place sustainability was not beforehand mission-critical to them. A ultimate roadblock space is the shortage of information, and that is the place we’re partnering with our cooperatives to assist them to digitize paper-based processes, for instance enhancing their farmer lists and by supporting them with means to digitize transaction data utilizing our app and card system. Sometimes it’s ranging from scratch, however as we acquire knowledge by way of the Trace platform, we will facilitate actual change all through the availability chain and assist to be sure that farmers are paid pretty for his or her merchandise.
How can shoppers assist Fairfood’s mission?
There are a number of methods shoppers can assist with Fairfood’s mission in the direction of a sustainable meals system.
- Education: Learn about what firms are supporting moral and sustainable meals practices. Being an knowledgeable, accountable shopper can assist to affect the system as a complete and result in actual, actionable change. Visit the Fairfood web site for extra info.
- Enjoy coding? Get concerned: For the tech-savvy, one method to get entangled is to presumably assist Fairfood by way of open-source software program contributions. Reach out to Derek at, derek@fairfood.org for extra particulars on how one can contribute on Trace cell.
- Connect Fairfood to future partnerships: Know of any native firms focused on bringing absolutely traceable merchandise to shoppers? Reach out to Peter at, peter@fairfood.org.
Share: