✉️ This story was featured in this week’s Coffee News Club
👋 Get the Coffee News Club newsletter in your inbox weekly—sign up.
After being delayed twice, the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is finally due to come into effect for large coffee brands at the end of 2026. The legislation requires companies to prove that the coffee they import into the EU—the world’s largest coffee market—was produced without contributing to forest destruction.
The EUDR has been controversial since lawmakers introduced the legislation in 2019. While environmental organizations have welcomed the law, industry groups have criticized it for its potential impact on farmers. To ensure compliance, companies must provide data showing that their products weren’t grown on deforested land, a task that involves accurately mapping millions of small coffee farms. Getting that data wrong could mean farmers missing out.
Last week, the coffee nonprofit organization Fairtrade International launched a new tool called Plot Insights, a “digital system” that aims to help its members manage, analyze, and share geolocation data. The organization has previously supported its members with mapping their farms. The goal with the new tool is to help cooperatives and farmers ensure that the data they collect is accurate and complies with the EU’s complex requirements.
“Farmers are having to adopt new digital tools and map farm plots, which is an expensive burden in order to continue to be viable suppliers to the European market,” said Fairtrade’s senior advisor for climate and environment, Brenda Mariana Huerta García, in a press release.
Fairtrade will offer the tool for free to its more than 800 member cooperatives, who can upload geolocation data to the platform and receive feedback on accuracy and deforestation risk analysis. Cooperatives can use that analysis to prepare mitigation plans, including education or monitoring in high-risk areas, Fairtrade said in a press release.
Starting in October, cooperatives will also be able to use the platform to share geolocation data directly with buyers, embedding plot information directly in contracts. The goal is to streamline the process of data management and storage at a time when up-to-date geolocation information is more important than ever.
Plot Insight’s impact could be considerable: According to Fairtrade, there are more than 775,000 coffee farmers within its system, who together produced 578,000 metric tons of coffee in 2023.
Read more on Fairtrade’s deforestation reporting platform from Global Coffee Report here.
Photo by Shelby Murphy Figueroa on Unsplash
