Biome Makers and DISAGRO assess and confirm the efficiency of regenerative methods, guaranteeing the best possible results for coffee growers affiliated with ECOM Costa Rica.
- 100 Forward-Thinking Coffee Producers Embrace Innovative Regenerative Techniques: ECOM Costa Rica collaborates with 100 coffee growers in Costa Rica, along with DISAGRO® and Biome Makers, to implement cutting-edge regenerative practices, including biostimulants, cover crops, and shade farming.
- Reliable Sustainability Measurement: The industry’s first scientifically validated metric and soil health indicator for regenerative coffee farming is BeCrop® Rate. It harnesses AI technology and a taxonomic database featuring 14 million microorganism references to track the evolution of soil health across more than 180 crops in 45 countries.
- Advanced Remote Sensing and Precision Agriculture: AgritecGEO’s advanced analysis enables the detection of temporal and geographical changes in crop vegetation indices, ensuring precise selection of soil sampling points.
- High-Quality and Sustainable Coffee Production: BeCrop® Rate serves as a guide for farmers in producing sustainable coffee. It deciphers soil microbial networks, provides actionable insights, and promotes a positive environmental impact.
ECOM, a renowned global firm specializing in soft commodities such as coffee, cocoa, and cotton, has taken a leadership role in validating regenerative agriculture. Through collaboration with coffee producers in Costa Rica, the company has embarked on a significant journey to adopt responsible farming methods. By embracing the innovative BeCrop® Rate, a sustainability metric developed by Biome Makers, and the AgritecGEO model from DISAGRO, which provides farmers with diagnostic tools for digital agriculture, they can now effectively measure and monitor the impressive enhancements in soil health and biodiversity within their thriving coffee crops.
Large multinational food and beverage corporations are committed to seeking credible proof of sustainably sourced and supported food products, and they aim to report their positive environmental impacts. To achieve this objective, it is crucial to closely collaborate with farm operators to enhance the sustainability of their practices. Over the past two years, ECOM Costa Rica has carefully chosen 100 of its most innovative coffee growers in Costa Rica to implement various regenerative methods. These practices encompass the use of biostimulants, organic additives, cover crops, and optimizing sunlight efficiency through shade farming, among other initiatives.
BeCrop® Rate has been instrumental in monitoring the progression of coffee fields and confirming the enhancements in soil health. This innovative metric leverages advanced scientific methodologies, harnessing the ecological computing power of BeCrop® technology with AI, and relies on the extensive global taxonomic database containing 14 million microorganisms. This approach deciphers the intricate soil microbial networks and evaluates the impact of the farmer’s interventions on a per-crop and regional basis. It stands out as the sole metric endorsed by the scientific community and tested globally across 180 diverse crop types, effectively measuring, verifying, and enhancing sustainability.
Alberto Acedo, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Biome Makers, emphasized the industry’s need for a consistent metric that scientifically confirms a farm’s current status in terms of soil recovery and sustainability. He highlighted that BeCrop® Rate empowers farmers to assess their management practices and promote transparency in achieving healthier and more sustainable food production.
Tomás Gutiérrez Acuña from ECOM expressed the significance of improving coffee farming practices through regenerative agriculture and underscored the utility of a tool like BeCrop Rate. He noted that BeCrop Rate provided them with valuable soil health metrics to monitor changes over time, including enhancements in belowground biodiversity, crop yields, and carbon sequestration.
ECOM Costa Rica, in conjunction with their agronomic solutions provider, DISAGRO®, utilized the AgritecGEO® digital agriculture platform to conduct BeCrop® Rates assessments on 100 coffee fields spanning an average of 20 hectares each across Costa Rica. The assessments yielded varying ratings for the farms, underscoring the impact of their current management approaches. This insightful data equipped ECOM Costa Rica’s farmers with a roadmap for cultivating high-quality, sustainably-produced coffee. The BeCrop® Rate program also grants farmers a Certification, offers a digital gateway (API) to access essential metrics derived from the assessment results, and provides marketing support to bolster their presence in the market.
Javier Iglesias from DISAGRO® in Costa Rica highlighted their commitment to employing cutting-edge technology to offer solutions to all their customers. They recommended BeCrop® Rate to ECOM Costa Rica to assist them in their adoption of regenerative agriculture. The results obtained from BeCrop® Rate enabled them to offer tailored recommendations to ECOM Costa Rica’s farmer partners for enhancing soil health while also saving them time and resources on the farm.
The partnership involving ECOM Costa Rica, DISAGRO®, and Biome Makers demonstrates a shared dedication to driving positive change within the agricultural sector. By pooling their collective expertise, they have played a pivotal role in helping coffee growers achieve their sustainability objectives and implement regenerative farming practices.
