Kenya Commits To EUDR Compliance By December Implementation Date – CoffeeTalk

Kenya is committing to comply with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), a crucial rule that could shut out non-compliant agricultural exports from the EU market starting December 30, 2025. Under the regulation, companies exporting commodities like coffee, tea, cocoa, and palm oil to the EU must prove their products are deforestation-free, which means tracing goods back to the exact plot of land they were produced on. This is a massive challenge in countries with fragmented supply chains and limited digital infrastructure.

The EUDR applies to seven high-risk commodities: cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soybean, and wood, along with a wide range of derived products such as leather, chocolate, furniture, and paper. These commodities are frequently linked to deforestation in tropical regions, where forests are often cleared to make way for plantations or pastureland. Under the EUDR, companies handling these goods must prove that they are not linked to deforestation or forest degradation after December 31, 2020. To meet the regulation, businesses must conduct due diligence on their supply chains, including verifying the legal compliance of the products in their country of origin and demonstrating that the land used to produce them was not subject to deforestation. Crucially, companies are required to provide precise geographic coordinates of production plots, enabling EU authorities to confirm that products were sourced from deforestation-free areas.

The law imposes a strict timeline for compliance. Non-compliance can lead to significant penalties, including product seizures, fines, and exclusion from the EU market. As a result, producers and exporters around the world must now align their supply chain practices with EUDR requirements to retain access to one of the world’s largest consumer markets.

Blockchain-powered platforms can offer a secure, tamper-proof way to trace products across complex supply chains. With blockchain, each stage – planting, harvesting, collection, aggregation, transport — can be recorded in a transparent, auditable system. GPS coordinates, farmer ID, land ownership documents, and deforestation checks can be embedded into a digital token or smart contract. The EU doesn’t require blockchain, but given the scale and complexity of Kenyan agriculture, the technology offers a cost-efficient and trustworthy system to meet the regulation’s strict data standards.

Dimitra Europe, a subsidiary of Dimitra Inc., is partnering with Arasco Food BV in a pilot project in Cameroon to digitize coffee supply chains. The Connected Coffee platform integrates blockchain and advanced digital technologies to bring traceability, transparency, and legal verification to agricultural supply chains. The project aims to bring 5,000 farmers onto the platform to help them secure compliance certificates that prove their coffee was produced on land not deforested after December 31, 2020.

Dimitra is currently active in multiple countries across Africa, including Cameroon, Kenya, Ethiopia, Libya, and Egypt. In Cameroon, Dimitra Europe GmbH launched a pilot in partnership with Arasco Food BV to digitize and make the coffee supply chain compliant with the EU Deforestation Regulation. The initiative is onboarding 5,000 smallholder coffee farmers in the Littoral and West regions.

In East Africa, particularly Kenya, Dimitra has partnered with One Million Avocados (OMA) to integrate its Connected Farmer platform into avocado production efforts. The app supports pest and disease prevention, data reporting, and traceability, all anchored via blockchain. This empowers avocado growers to document sustainable practices, reduce operational costs, and align with international compliance frameworks.

In Egypt, Dimitra joined forces with Solidaridad Network and Life From Water Foundation to onboard around 3,000 farmers, implementing blockchain-backed systems for traceability and legal verification in agricultural exports. Dimitra also signed a partnership with the Jimma Coffee Cooperative Union in Ethiopia, engaging over 140,000 smallholder farmers across 212 cooperatives.

In Libya, Dimitra partnered with the country’s Ministry of Agriculture’s AI-ASA project, enrolling around 520 farmers in a blockchain-based precision agriculture trial. Through its Connected Farmer platform, augmented by remote sensing and IoT, farmers receive real-time agronomic insights, soil health data, and traceable records for better resource use and compliance readiness across export chains.

Blockchain claims to play a crucial role, aiming to secure data integrity and enabling end-to-end traceability. Once a farmer’s data is uploaded, the platform uses geospatial verification, timestamps, and immutable logging to ensure transparency and verifiability at every step in the supply chain.

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