Companies buying and selling agricultural commodities face growing pressure to prove the origins and environmental credentials of their supply chains. Physical auditing cannot operate at the pace or scale that regulations and buyers now demand.
Key challenges include:
- Audit gaps: physical inspections cover a small fraction of supplier farms, particularly where supply chains pass through millions of smallholder producers in tropical countries
- Regulatory exposure: the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requires companies to prove that their commodities did not contribute to deforestation after 31 December 2020, backed by geolocated farm data. Few companies currently have the data infrastructure to meet this requirement across their full supplier base
- Certification fraud: sustainability certificates (Rainforest Alliance, organic, Fairtrade, etc.) rely on periodic field inspections that can be falsified or go out of date between audits
- Crop forecast gaps: traders and processors need volume forecasts months ahead of harvest to manage purchasing and logistics, but ground-based surveys are slow and cover a small share of producing regions
- Supply chain opacity: companies with contracted growers often have limited visibility of what is actually happening in their fields between visits
How EO can help
Satellites observe agricultural land continuously and at scales that are not achievable from the ground. Key capabilities include:
- Deforestation detection at farm scale: Copernicus Sentinel-2 time-series (10 m resolution, 5-day revisit) can identify forest loss events and link them to specific parcels or within a trader’s sourcing area, allowing companies to flag non-compliant suppliers before goods enter their supply chain
- Crop type identification and yield forecasting: multispectral and radar imagery from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and commercial satellites (Planet, Maxar) can distinguish crop types, track growing conditions, and forecast harvest volumes months in advance
- Remote certification verification: very high-resolution imagery can verify land use, count shade trees in certified plantations, and assess vegetation conditions without an auditor on site
- Farm-level traceability: GNSS-based farm polygon mapping combined with satellite analysis creates a verifiable record linking a commodity batch to a specific field, the core data requirement for EUDR due diligence
Key examples
- World AgroCommodities project
The World AgroCommodities project (AgroCommodities.info) is funded by ESA under its EO4Society Applications Element. It develops satellite-based tools that help EU national authorities verify the corporate due diligence reports submitted under the EUDR. The platform uses Copernicus Sentinel imagery combined with COSMO-SkyMed radar data to monitor the seven EUDR-regulated commodities (cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, soya, rubber, and wood) in the countries where they are produced. The project runs from September 2024 to September 2026, led by a consortium of seven European organisations including GAF AG and VITO (Belgium).
Figure: Illustration of the integration of forest cover, deforestation rate and accessibility to generate the deforestation risk in each site (example for Argentina). – Source: World AgroCommodities
- ORCAS
ORCAS, funded by ESA Business Applications, is a traceability platform for cocoa and coffee supply chains. It operates through two services: Digitrak, an Android application that records farm location, yield, and sale data from growers; and Sustainimaps, which runs satellite-based compliance assessments against EUDR standards and generates QR-linked traceability records for each commodity batch. A pilot study in Colombia demonstrated the system across a cocoa supply chain. Reports generated through ORCAS have supported up to USD 1 billion in sustainable green finance.
Figure: ORCAS diagram
EO4CS
EO4CS, funded by ESA Business Applications, is a cloud-based system that verifies sustainable cocoa farming practices using satellite imagery, removing the need for on-site inspections across large supplier bases. It combines moderate-resolution imagery (Sentinel-2, Landsat) for broad-scale deforestation detection with very high-resolution data (PlanetScope, WorldView, SPOT) for detailed farm-level assessments, including individual shade tree identification and crown cover measurement. The system covers compliance with Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade, and organic certification standards in West Africa and Latin America.
Figure: Workflow in EO4CS
- Satelligence
Satelligence is a Dutch company that provides satellite-based deforestation monitoring for commodity supply chains. Its platform covers palm oil, cocoa, coffee, soy, beef, rubber, timber, and other commodities, and monitors forest cover continuously within each company’s sourcing area. Clients include Unilever, Cargill, Nestlé, Mondelez, and IKEA. The platform is Verra-approved and CDP-accredited, and is used by commodity buyers to detect deforestation events in their supply chains and to produce evidence for sustainability disclosures.
Further resources
Related ESA-funded projects:
- ORCAS: traceability platform for cocoa and coffee supply chains
- EO4CS: satellite-based verification of cocoa sustainability certification
- World AgroCommodities: EUDR verification tool for EU national authorities
Relevant resources:
