Agricultural traceability from farm plot to shelf

What farm to fork traceability means at lot level

The unit that matters in farm to fork traceability is the lot: a defined quantity of product with its own ID that moves through the chain together. Lot-level traceability means you can take any lot ID, whether it's a bag in a warehouse, a container at port or a jar on a shelf, and list every farm plot that went into it and every handling step since. Tracing forwards, to where a lot went, is what you need in a recall.

Chains handle mixing in three ways: identity-preserved lots stay linked to one farm, segregated chains mix only verified product, and mass balance lets verified and unverified product mix as long as volumes add up on paper. For the EUDR you need the geolocation of every plot behind each lot, and a lot containing product from plots you can't identify can't be shown to be deforestation-free, which is why most EUDR programs work with segregated or identity-preserved lots. Mixing product from many known plots is fine: you carry all their geolocations forward, and our ledger links each lot to every plot it came from.

Plot geolocation requirements

The EUDR asks for the geolocation of every plot where the commodity was produced. Under the regulation's definitions, a plot larger than four hectares (for any commodity except cattle) has to be described as a polygon, with enough latitude and longitude points to trace its perimeter, while a smaller plot can be given as a single point. Coordinates need at least six decimal places. For cattle, the geolocation covers the establishments where the animals were kept. Since the 2025 amendment, micro and small primary producers established in low-risk countries file a one-off simplified declaration instead, so check which category each supplier falls into.

Even where a point is allowed, we'd collect polygons when you can. A deforestation check on a point covers only that spot. A polygon covers the whole field and lets you compare the plot's area with the volume it supplies.

Mistakes we see in plot data

• Points recorded at the farmer's house, the village or the buying center instead of the field.
• Polygons that cross over themselves or overlap a neighbor's plot, usually from walking the boundary with a weak GPS signal.
• Plots that fall inside a protected area or forest reserve.
• Volumes too high for the mapped area, a common sign that product from elsewhere is being passed through.

In Farmonaut, plots are drawn on the satellite map or uploaded as KML, KMZ or shapefiles, and seeing the boundary over current imagery makes misplaced points, self-crossing shapes and overlaps easy to spot when the plot is entered.

Checking plots against the 31 December 2020 cutoff

EUDR deforestation monitoring comes down to one question per plot: was there forest on it at the end of 2020, and is it still there? The regulation uses the FAO definition of forest, meaning land over 0.5 hectares with trees taller than 5 meters and canopy cover above 10 percent, or trees able to reach those thresholds, excluding land mainly in agricultural or urban use.

We compare satellite imagery of each plot from before the cutoff with current imagery and flag tree cover loss inside the boundary for review. Each flag needs a person to review it. Shade trees thinned over old cocoa or coffee, a plantation replanted on its normal cycle, or a fire scar regrowing can all trigger one and turn out fine. A fresh clearing at the edge of a forest block, or a "new" plot that was forest in 2020, is the kind of case that needs action. Record each decision with the evidence.

The EU Observatory on deforestation publishes a global forest cover map for 2020, built by the Commission's Joint Research Centre, which many teams use as one reference layer. It isn't legally binding, and plot-level imagery is still what settles a flagged case. Our seven-step guide to EUDR deforestation monitoring and how remote sensing helps agribusiness meet the EUDR go further into the methods.

What goes into an EUDR due diligence statement

Under the EUDR, a relevant product can be placed on the EU market only if it's deforestation-free, produced in line with the relevant laws of the country of production, and covered by a due diligence statement filed through the EU's information system. In general terms, the statement includes:

• who the operator is;
• the product, its HS code and quantity;
• the country of production;
• the geolocation of every plot the product came from;
• a declaration that due diligence was carried out and found no risk, or only negligible risk.

Behind it sit three steps: collecting information, assessing risk, and reducing any risk that isn't negligible. Because the rules have been amended since 2023, check the Commission's EUDR implementation pages for the current version before you file. Since the 2025 amendment, the statement is filed by the operator who first places the product on the market, and downstream operators and traders keep its reference number instead of filing their own.

Where blockchain, RFID and QR codes fit

These three get mentioned together, but they do different jobs.

Blockchain ledger

Our blockchain traceability runs on Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned ledger. The participants are known organizations such as growers' groups, processors and the brand, there's no cryptocurrency involved, and each entry is time-stamped and shared, so no single party can quietly rewrite it. The limit is worth knowing: a ledger shows a record hasn't changed since it was written, and can't show it was true when it was written. That's why our first record is a mapped plot that has been checked by satellite. How to track food supply chains using blockchain explains ledgers in food chains in more depth.

RFID tags and QR codes

RFID tags can be read without line of sight and many at once, so they suit bins, crates, pallets and bulk bags moving through warehouses and processing plants. They cost more than a printed label, so they usually go on reusable containers or high-value units. A QR code costs almost nothing to print and any phone can read it, which makes it the tool for the consumer end. In the Dabur honey project, a QR scan on the jar shows the journey from hive to shelf; we wrote up how honey traceability with blockchain worked there.

Collecting data from smallholders and cooperatives

Much of the world's cocoa, coffee and rubber comes from smallholders farming a few hectares each and selling through a cooperative, a local collector or a mill. Most of the practical work in a traceability program happens at this stage. What tends to work:

• Register each member and their plots once, through the cooperative, and reuse that record every season.
• Have field staff walk the boundary with a phone or draw it over satellite imagery with the farmer, then check the shape on screen before leaving.
• Record weight, date, farmer ID and collection point at the first sale, so each lot starts life with its list of farms attached.
• Give members something back. The same plot record can feed satellite crop monitoring for their fields, which makes it easier to ask for the data.

The mapping campaign itself is a field-team job. The Agro Admin app assigns plots to staff with deadlines and shows which are done, pending or late.

Choosing agricultural traceability software and rolling it out

Questions to ask any vendor of agricultural traceability software:

• Does the record start at the plot or at the warehouse?
• Can it import the boundary formats your suppliers already have, and flag bad geometry?
• How are deforestation flags reviewed, and is the evidence kept with each decision?
• Does every plot's geolocation stay attached when lots are mixed?
• Who can write to the ledger, and can entries be edited afterwards?
• Can buyer-facing QR pages run under your brand, and does it cover non-EUDR products you trace, such as cotton or honey?

Implementation steps

1. Agree the scope: commodities, sourcing regions and the reports you have to file.
2. List your suppliers, direct and through cooperatives or collectors.
3. Map plots or import existing boundaries, and fix geometry errors.
4. Run the satellite deforestation checks and record a decision on every flagged plot.
5. Start writing collection, processing and packing steps to the ledger, with RFID where product moves in bulk and QR codes on packs.
6. Generate compliance reports and buyer pages, and keep plots under watch so later clearing is caught.

How long this takes depends mostly on step 3: how many plots there are, how many already have usable boundaries, and how easy they are to reach. We usually suggest starting with one commodity in one region and expanding from there.