Fair Trade USA has spent the last 15 years building relationships with farmers and workers in supply chains around the world, and we have connected them to a variety of services to help strengthen their organizations.

1998Fair Trade USA founded

Population // 5.9bPoverty // 1.7bInternet // 150mmMobile // 70mmSmartphone // 00

When our work began, access to the internet in the coffee growing regions of the world was virtually impossible.

2014Today

Population // 7bPoverty // 1.2bInternet // 2.7bMobile // 4bSmartphone // 1b

Since then, global internet connectivity has exploded. Agricultural organizations in some of the most remote places in the world are gaining access to the internet via a variety of avenues.

2017Projected

Population // 7.3bPoverty // 657mmInternet // 3.6bMobile // 5bSmartphone // 1.5b

And the growth shows no signs of stopping. We are helping give smallholder producer organizations an edge by connecting them to technologies that can help their businesses operate more efficiently.

Smallholder producer organizations have identified the need to move business critical data away from pen & paper and into a format that can be efficiently analyzed.

Farmers around the world are issued paper receipts when dropping off coffee, cocoa, and other crops at collection stations. In theory someone enters the information from these receipts into the computer, but busy days often preclude this task.

The primary goal of Acopio is enabling collection station workers to digitally record transactions with farmers. Removing pen and paper from the process puts data in a machine-readable format that the organization can use in several ways.

Recording harvest data with Acopio provides the ability to see production variation at the farmer level, which is used to determine micro-finance eligibility and is aggregated to forecast organizational production.

Recording quality characteristics associated with each harvest enables the organization to better communicate the value of their product to buyers, financiers, and others.

Once farmers and their organizations have better visibility into their operations, they are empowered with the ability to make data-driven decisions. They also now have the ability to provide better data to financial and supply chain stakeholders.

When an individual smallholder organization has data points from each of their members, they can provide financiers and buyers with a robust data model to predict risk and need.

Learn more at Acopio.org