Enveritas is a non-profit start-up that is working to change the ‘steep price tag’ associated with getting certification for ‘responsibly sourced coffee.’
A suite of new techniques that leverage technology to assess the sustainability of coffee growing operations at a much lower cost than other certifications. In fact, Enveritas offers certification to small farmers at no cost.
Enveritas has developed a set of 30 different metrics that it uses to measure a coffee farm against. These metrics are broken out into 3 categories — social, environmental and economic.
For example, Enveritas uses satellite imagery and machine learning to check coffee farms for deforestation, which is one of its key environmental metrics. Leveraging centralized, automated solutions to validate as many of its metrics as possible helps Enveritas to lower the cost of its free-to-farmer certification while still maintaining a high level of integrity and accuracy.
The average farmer Enveritas works with, “has less than two hectares of land, lives on less than $2 a day and relies on cash crops for their family’s income.” That’s just under 5 acres of land.
Enveritas currently operates in Uganda, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Colombia and is working to add new farmers and countries all the time.
The team is also working to determine if its techniques and solution can be applied to similar industries like cacao, palm oil and cotton.
Reference- Tech Crunch, Enveritas website