Zowasel Crop Pilot plans to reward farmers and make them climate heroes through soil carbon sequestration.
Zowasel is taking bold steps to reward African farmers and make them climate heroes by removing tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering it in their agricultural soil to improve their yields through a combination of nature-based solutions, data science, and technology.
‘’The regenerative agriculture approach has the potential to transform agriculture from a carbon source to a carbon sink, inspiring hope for a more sustainable and optimistic future through Zowasel Crop Pilot, a Digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (d-MRV) technology.’’
The adoption of an integrated and united approach is to scale the Zowasel Marketplace platform and drive regenerative agriculture by directly connecting big corporates with farmers’ co-operatives, making it bold to reward smallholder farmers with carbon credit for burying CO2 in the soil to improve their soil health and making smallholder farmers climate heroes through soil carbon sequestration process.
Zowasel is currently piloting “Crop Pilot” in the sorghum value chains in Nigeria, working with 4,500 smallholder farmers across five clusters for the next three years to support their transition process to regenerative agriculture.
Crop Pilot is powered by advanced data science and technology and empowers corporate organizations to drive their regenerative agricultural goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across their supply chains. It provides real-time monitoring, accurate reporting, and transparent verification of carbon sequestration activities, enabling companies to meet their sustainability goals and regulatory compliance requirements.
The d-MRV leverages cutting-edge digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), remote sensing, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, to boost soil carbon estimates’ efficiency, accuracy, and integrity. The technology stack includes:
Artificial Intelligence (AI): We apply complex algorithms to analyze extensive data sets, identify patterns, and compute emission reductions. It facilitates tasks such as learning, decision-making, and problem-solving.
Machine Learning (ML): A subset of AI, ML we use data to teach computers to recognize patterns and make decisions without explicit programming. It improves predictions of project impacts, streamlines reporting, and aids in carbon credit verification. Using data from various trusted sources, AI and ML enhance project outcome predictions and design. They automate MRV processes like real-time monitoring of emission reductions, report generation, and early anomaly detection.
Remote Sensing: We use this technology to utilize satellite imagery and drones to monitor project areas from a distance, eliminating the need for physical presence. For example, it can monitor land use, forest cover, and environmental changes across large, often inaccessible areas, thus supporting precise measurements like biomass changes and afforestation efforts.
Internet of Things (IoT) Devices: We use IoT to integrate sensors and technologies into physical objects, enabling them to collect and share data. These devices monitor real-time environmental conditions (e.g., CO2 levels, temperature, humidity). IoT is a requirement for soil carbon sequestration to improve carbon calculation accuracy.
Crop Pilot is designed to meet voluntary and regulatory compliance goals, offering transparent and accountable reporting of carbon footprints across value chains. It will provide innovative and scalable measures, reports, and verification of climate regulatory compliance, such as soil carbon sequestration and agroforestry programs and the EU Deforestation-free crops, to serve big corporate organizations across agricultural value chains.
A report from carbon offsets analysis reveals that two-thirds of the world’s biggest companies with net-zero targets are using carbon offsets to help meet their climate goals. Africa’s growing population has increased food demand, resulting in a carbon footprint from agricultural activities that negatively impacts the environment.
Smallholder farmers, often overlooked, are more than just emitters. Despite their challenges, such as limited access to resources and market volatility, they produce over 70% of the food we eat, contribute an average of 40% of GDP across African countries, and account for about 30% of the value of exports from Africa. Zowasel’s CEO, Jerry OCHE, emphasizes, “We want to make African smallholder farmers the heroes by enabling them to pull down tremendous tons of carbon and store it in their soil through carbon sequestration to improve their soil health and earn an extra income from carbon credit generated.” This recognition of their crucial role and challenges is intended to foster a sense of appreciation and respect among the audience for the potential impact of the Crop Pilot technology.
Connecting Big Corporates to Regenerative Agriculture
Zowasel is presently implementing a regenerative agriculture program in Nigeria in partnership with Guinness Nigeria Plc., a Diageo-affiliated company bought by Tolagam Group, across the sorghum value chain. This partnership is crucial as it leverages Guinness Nigeria’s expertise and resources to drive smallholder farmers’ transition to regenerative agriculture, increasing their income and improving livelihoods and soil health. The program is one such collaboration with big corporates, supported by IDH for the next three years, which will further enhance the impact of this collaboration.
The current agricultural supply chain is a complex network of service providers and software that frequently lives in their silos, making it challenging to track sustainability metrics. Zowasel is bridging the gap by providing a one-stop shop for monitoring environmental data and traceability, alternative finance, trading, and farm-to-factory delivery management.
In anticipation of the upcoming climate regulations and changes in the agriculture supply chain
Zowasel is preparing for the incoming regulations and regulatory compliance opportunities across the agriculture and agri-food industry, from climate change decarbonization to the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which requires that all products placed on or exported from the European Union be deforestation-free. To comply with the EUDR regulations, which will begin to apply on January 1, 2025, major corporations must provide documents and data such as geolocation coordinates and the country of production.
However, the current measurement systems significantly impact the global food systems, responsible for about 17 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 26% of annual emissions. These systems are costly, error-prone, and time-consuming and are not just inefficient but also complicated.
They rely on manual processes, in-person surveys, PDF files, spreadsheets, and hand-based methods, undermining accountability and transparency in meeting sustainability goals and regulatory compliance on GHG emissions reduction reporting. Brewers and FMCGs seek a robust and scalable solution for meeting their global climate change commitments, including data collection, monitoring, analytics, and reporting of supply chain footprints.
“Much discussion has been about the opportunities for regenerative agriculture programs such as soil carbon sequestration and agroforestry, deforestation-free crop regulatory compliance, etc. “We are seizing the chance to support smallholder farmers in meeting regulatory requirements of crop quality standards, farm-to-factory traceability, and reducing synthetic and inorganic materials across value chains.
These policies are large enough and will change how and where crops are produced, how they are shipped, and where they go. We are building the technology at the size and scale of agriculture production; commodity marketing is what we’re positioned to do, exploring partnerships and pilots with big corporations like processors and manufacturers to drive the transition process and support their existing and new networks of smallholder farmers”. Added Jerry OCHE.
To meet global climate change regulatory and voluntary compliances, Zowasel Crop Pilot offers a robust and scalable dMRV suite for data collection, monitoring, analytics, and reporting supply chain footprints in a transparent and accountable manner to transform agriculture from a carbon source to a carbon sink.
Notably, the Crop Pilot enables corporations to track regenerative agriculture practices and outcomes in the field while connecting with actionable data that helps them locate and purchase more “sustainably produced” crops across decarbonized value chains. As data becomes the new oil, global consumer demand for “sustainable” food rises, and new regulations require such data for compliance with necessary due diligence.
According to Zowasel, soil carbon sequestration projects are created on the platform across more than 4500 hectares, supporting about 2,500 sorghum smallholder farmers on the Guinness Nigeria sorghum value chains program. Major partners currently include Guinness Nigeria, IDH, and other research partners.
Towards a global platform
In 2024, Zowasel announced it had expanded into East Africa from Nigeria to support farmers transitioning to regenerative agriculture practices. The company expanded its platform to connect grain buyers with farmer organizations using regenerative practices to meet the growing demand for sustainable food. The aim is to enable buyers and sellers to connect, interact, and negotiate deals. Crop Pilot provides the infrastructure to label crops with environmental claims as they enter the supply chain. It offers access to environmental premiums at the size and scale of grain markets.
Through its regenerative agriculture programs, corporate organizations can submit data from the farmer network to Crop Pilot, which will validate their sustainability practices and calculate corresponding environmental outcomes. Zowasel also supports farm mapping and farm-level data collection since most African smallholder farmers need their soil data to be readable and available anywhere.
According to Austin Chibuke, Zowasel CTO, “We assure farmers and processors that their data is secured and wholly transparent, and that data is not shared with other partners, either in ownership or other parts. As farmers sign up for programs, they understand what data is being collected, why it’s being collected, and who it is going to explicitly.”
The Missing Link in the Agriculture Supply Chain
Zowasel Crop Pilot is a cohesive and scalable solution comprising cutting-edge tools and technology, sustainability solutions, and alternative financial services for farmer co-operatives and corporate organizations in agriculture. Zowasel provides an ecosystem of integrated services to unify what has traditionally been a fragmented and antiquated service landscape.
With the Zowasel platform, crop buyers can build managed value chain programs, organize their network of farmers, and source low-carbon crops all through one technology and service platform. Corporations are exploring Crop Pilot technology to validate farmers’ sustainability claims by accessing farm-level data about how the crop was produced.
The most hopeful solution to climate change is the potential for agricultural soils to capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide. The biggest challenge has been measuring carbon storage, quantifying it, and reporting it to a third party to validate and certify it.
While widespread recognition exists that soil’s ability to store carbon makes it an essential weapon in the fight against climate change, there has been less clarity on how to tap that potential at a large scale. Zowasel believes Crop Pilot will allow for rapid, accurate, transparent, and fast assessment of supply chains as a critical tool for driving the transition to regenerative agriculture across Africa.
The agricultural sector is one of the most significant contributors to greenhouse emissions. Still, it can also lead the fight against climate change, and Crop Pilot has a crucial role in unlocking this potential.
As part of the pilot, Zowasel is conducting field research to explore new market solutions, such as carbon credits for loan guarantees and loan repayment, and to determine whether carbon credits can accelerate financial inclusion across remote communities.
For Inquiries and partnerships, email us at partnership@zowasel.com
