Rainforest Alliance to unveil newtool to help farmers meet EU rules

The Rainforest Alliance will soon launch a Deforestation Risk Assessment Tool to help farmers comply with the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR).

This service will provide customers with key industry-leading risk assessments for deforestation based on AI remote sensing forest data, publicly available data sets, and the Rainforest Alliance’s proprietary tree cover maps.

The Rainforest Alliance developed this tool to support coffee and cocoa supply chain actors and farmers, especially those with non-certified sourcing footprints, with their EUDR compliance efforts.

Industry-leading tool

“Our industry-leading Deforestation Risk Assessment Tool leverages our expertise in identifying deforestation risk. This tool has been embedded in our Certification Programme for years, and we have decided to make our extensive knowledge in identifying deforestation risk more broadly available to support coffee and cocoa supply chain actors and farmers with their EUDR compliance efforts,” notes a company statement.

The European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) requirements are set to take effect from December 30, 2024.

The regulations require operators and traders of cocoa and coffee (as well as derived products like chocolate) to EU markets, or export them from the EU, to prove that these products do not originate from land deforested after December 31, 2020.