GFW Pro User Spotlight: Farmforce

We spoke to Saurav Shrivastava, Head of Product at Farmforce, about why they chose to work with GFW Pro for their Enterprise Deforestation Monitoring solution and how they support companies in tackling the complexity of EUDR compliance.

Getting visibility into the first mile of food sourcing operations is notoriously challenging. How does Farmforce help organizations that want to sustainably source commodities tackle this?

The first mile is characterized by fragmented supply chains, small plots, low connectivity and a high volume of paperwork. Farmforce’s mission is to disentangle that complexity and help create greater visibility into supply chains without putting the burden on field teams.

Our mobile tools capture the data companies affected by the EUDR need at the source: farm geolocations (points or polygons), farmer registry and consent, land-related documents, planting and harvest dates, volumes and certifications and every hand-off in the chain of custody. We designed them for low-bandwidth environments with offline mode, GPS capture and role-based access so enumerators and buying agents can work reliably and securely.

All that first-mile data flows into a structured model that’s easy to search, validate and export. You can track every delivery back to a farm, link it to a field boundary and understand who grew what, where and when. For cocoa and coffee, where smallholder farmers make up a large portion of production, clean data capture combined with traceability along the supply chain turns this visibility into credible evidence for compliance or claims.

Farmer looking at application. Photo credit: Farmforce

How does Farmforce’s collaboration with GFW Pro support companies in navigating compliance challenges like the EUDR?

The EUDR turns traceability into table stakes: companies must provide precise geolocations and demonstrate deforestation-free sourcing with a risk-based due diligence process. Our collaboration with GFW Pro makes that workflow practical and repeatable.Here’s what it looks like in Farmforce:

Once farm geolocation data is captured or uploaded, we use the GFW Pro integration to check those areas against credible, regularly updated forest change information and risk indicators. That powers three critical steps that organizations can take:

1. Screening at scale: Run geospatial checks across thousands of farms in minutes to identify potential deforestation exposure and prioritize follow-up.

2. Ongoing monitoring: Plots identified as having medium or low risk of deforestation are tracked so companies can take action to avoid further deforestation.

3. Audit-ready documentation: Pull together an exportable “proof package” that includes farm geolocations, traceability evidence, GFW-informed risk assessments and your mitigation actions and outcomes.

For teams under pressure to meet the deadline for EUDR compliance, the result is confidence that geographies are verified, risks are identified and documentation is consistent from sourcing to submission.

Why is incorporating open data to generate insights important?

Two reasons: credibility and scale.

Open, well-governed, peer-reviewed data — like what’s available through GFW Pro — gives everyone a standard reference. When you’re making claims about deforestation-free cocoa or coffee, how you reached those conclusions shouldn’t be a black box. Using open data allows buyers, auditors and civil society to verify the evidence and reach the same conclusions. That transparency is powerful.

It also scales. Most companies work across multiple geographies and with both direct and indirect suppliers. You can’t afford bespoke analyses for every case, but you can operationalize a shared, open baseline: standardized layers, consistent methodologies and clear update cycles. We are seeing customers build internal playbooks on top of that: how to classify risk, when to trigger mitigation and how to communicate decisions. Farmforce’s job is to connect first-mile facts — farms, plots, movements along the supply chain — to those open insights so you get a living, measurable view of risk that improves over time.

Finally, open data supports inclusion. Smallholders don’t need to buy into proprietary systems to have their farms recognized. If they share geolocations and consent, they can be part of a verifiable, open-standards-aligned supply chain.

Coffee farmer in Colombia. Photo credit: CIAT

Traceability is essential not just from a regulatory perspective, but can also become a competitive advantage for businesses. Can you share some examples of the benefits beyond compliance?

Absolutely. While more companies are committing to traceable supply chains due to regulations like the EUDR, that first-mile foundation unlocks broader value, bringing additional benefits like:

• Substantiated sustainability claims: When you can link a cocoa or coffee bean back to a mapped plot of land and show ongoing forest-risk monitoring, your deforestation-free claim is more than a label — it’s a line of sight into actual sourcing practice. That strengthens relationships with commodity buyers and retailers who are raising the bar on evidence.

• Farmer engagement that sticks: Visibility makes it easier to provide targeted agricultural support — shade management, pruning cycles or fertilizer timing — based on real farm characteristics. Farmers see direct benefits (yield, quality, price realization) and companies ensure stable supply and better data quality because they’re invested in the process.

• Operational resilience: When a shipment is flagged for potential risk, you can re-route or substitute from known good suppliers because you’ve already mapped alternatives. That reduces the cost of surprises.

• Social and economic improvement: With documented farms and delivery histories, producers are better positioned to access services — training, inputs on credit or even financial products. We’ve seen suppliers use their verified records to unlock opportunities that were previously out of reach.

The through-line is that traceability isn’t just a compliance chore; it’s an information advantage that compounds across sourcing, sustainability and supply assurance.

What are you looking forward to in your continued collaboration with GFW Pro?

Three areas excite me:

1. Faster, smarter onboarding of smallholders: We’re investing in guided polygon capture and automated quality checks so field teams can map correctly the first time. Combined with GFW Pro, that means new suppliers can be screened and onboarded with confidence in days, not months.

2. Proactive risk management, not reactive reporting: With regular refreshes from GFW Pro, we can surface hotspots early — before they impact shipments — and embed mitigation playbooks right in the workflow: engage the farmer, verify on the ground, document corrective actions and track outcomes.

3. Beyond the EUDR: We want to start with offering compliance packs for ESG monitoring and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) compliance with a single click: geolocations, chain-of-custody events, GFW-informed risk checks and a clear due diligence log tailored to the respective formats. The goal is to spend less time assembling PDFs and more time improving real-world practices.

Ultimately, our partnership helps move the industry from periodic audits to continuous assurance. For cocoa and coffee, where reputational and operational stakes are high, that shift is essential.

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