Team Europe Initiative on Deforestation-free Value Chains

Digitalization is reshaping global supply chains, with regulations such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), corporate reporting, and certification systems increasingly relying on detailed farm-level data, including geolocation and proof of legality. As these requirements expand, smallholder farmers are bearing a growing share of the burden of data collection, while protections around data governance, sharing, and privacy remain uneven. This scoping study examines how smallholder production plot data is collected, managed, and shared across commodity supply chains, drawing on case studies from Colombia (cocoa), Kenya (coffee), Viet Nam (rubber), Indonesia (palm oil), and Brazil (soy). The study directly supports the work of the FAO Forestry Division on transparent commodity supply chains and Open Foris solutions by addressing how data from smallholders — who play a critical role in forest and land-use management — can be collected, governed, and shared more fairly and responsibly. It highlights emerging good practices and calls for a farmer-centred approach to data systems, with clearer responsibilities for regulators, standard owners, and corporate actors to ensure sustainability and due diligence objectives are achieved equitably. The publication was produced under FAO’s AIM4Forests programme and AIM4Commodities initiative, with financial support from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero of the United Kingdom (DESNZ) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.