The Data Economics Company (DECO) and Smallholder Data Services (SDS) have launched the first deployment of the SDS Platform software to provide visibility, traceability and verification for farmers’ regenerative agriculture products from farm-level data and via the Lydion Engine. As a result, enterprise-level agricultural product buyers from food and clothing manufacturers are able to trace and audit farm products with sufficient certainty to confidently market end products for consumers as “regenerative.”
SDS has received a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation grant to support research and development of mobile implementations of the SDS platform and to improve smallholder farming practices including adaptive landscape management with an aim of boosting yields and market access for smallholder farmers in Thailand, Haiti, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic.
“Regenerative agriculture means each farm’s contribution to and relationship with its ecosystem is essential,” said SDS co-founder Hugh Locke, president of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. “This initiative sets us on a course to allow brands to break down barriers between buyers and farmers. This is especially useful for regenerative agriculture and its holistic inclusion of not only the ecological and agricultural impacts, but also the human stories of farmers, their families and their communities.”
In his capacity as President and co-founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, Locke also served as a virtual panelist for the Climate Challenge Lab series which occurred in parallel with the COP27 Climate Implementation Summit.
“The power of the SDS platform is that it enables an economic model that aligns incentives all the way through from smallholder farmer to large consumer brands and sustainability-conscious consumers,” said Jennifer Hinkel, Managing Director and Chief Growth Officer at DECO. “Provable, traceable data about the regenerative nature of farm products has value to consumers and brands, and as a result, SDS creates a positive loop for farmer participation and the adoption of regenerative practices that benefit farm communities and climate impact more broadly. Our key thesis at DECO is that the science of data economics can likewise enable numerous positive economic loops where data generators—in this case, the millions of farmers on small plots that make up about a third of the world’s population—can capture the value of that data to a broad economy, opening up new possibilities for their farms and communities as well as for consumer brands.”
SOURCE: PR Newswire