RELEASE: Collaboration with AgStack on Open Source Digital Infrastructure
RELEASE: The Forest Data Partnership Unites with Leading Organizations to Develop Open Source Digital Infrastructure to Accelerate Supply Chain Traceability and EUDR Compliance
Collaboration with World Resources Institute, the Linux Foundation’s AgStack project, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, TechnoServe and Others to Accelerate the Development of EUDR Compliance Solutions and Boost Market Access for Smallholder Farmers
WASHINGTON, DC (November 25, 2025) — The Forest Data Partnership, co-founded by World Resources Institute (WRI), has announced a new collaboration with other leading organizations to develop critical building blocks for an open source digital public infrastructure (DPI) that will help accelerate global supply chain traceability and support efforts from smallholder farmers and companies to meet the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requirements.
The project will be carried out by the AgStack Foundation, an open source project by the Linux Foundation for the food and agriculture ecosystem, the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and TechnoServe, in collaboration with the Forest Data Partnership. Support for this new initiative comes from the Sustainable Agriculture for Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project, financed by the European Union (EU), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Team Europe Initiative on Deforestation-free Value Chains.
“The open source, pre-competitive, digital building blocks resulting from this partnership are vital in bridging critical gaps for all stakeholders to meet EUDR compliance in an efficient and scalable way,“ said Laura Vary, WRI’s Chief of Party for the Forest Data Partnership. “With WRI’s long record of collaboration with projects such as SAFE, we will use our deep network of relationships with the public sector, government agencies and the private sector to guide the open source community in developing digital public infrastructure for sustainable agriculture.”
EUDR compliance requires mapping precise field locations, assessing their deforestation status and sharing this data with business partners and regulators. To streamline this process, the project will deliver user-friendly tools and common standards for every step, including field mapping, deforestation assessment and integration with supply chain and regulatory systems.
The tools are pre-competitive and designed to enable interoperability between traceability systems. This will help smallholder farmers and their organizations to meet key EUDR requirements more efficiently and economically. These same tools will also be useful in demonstrating progress against voluntary commitments and passing information about deforestation risk along the supply chain.
“The Asset Registry is a great example of public data infrastructure that can dramatically simplify and reduce the cost of compliance. Because of its long experience working with smallholder value chains, TechnoServe can provide critical expertise on how to build practical solutions and infrastructure for smallholder farmers in developing countries,” said Shishir Verma, senior vice president, AgStack Ecosystem Development. “Additionally, we will leverage WRI’s knowledge and relationships from the Forest Data Partnership to help align technology and processes with the EUDR objectives.”
TechnoServe, a pioneer nonprofit fighting poverty through business solutions and a member of the Linux Foundation’s AgStack project, is contributing strategic insights and technology to help smallholder farmers meet EUDR compliance for crops like coffee and cocoa. The company has donated the code for TerraTrac, an application funded by the USDA, which uses AgStack’s Asset Registry to help map, register and assess field compliance globally.
“We want to address deforestation and climate change without putting the burden of regulatory compliance on smallholder farmers. With AgStack’s project and Linux Foundation’s proven open source ecosystem governance process, we are building the core digital public infrastructure that will benefit all actors throughout the food and ag value chain, accelerate innovation by the private sector and ultimately improve supply chain traceability for forest-risk commodities,” said Sildio Mbonyumuhire, director of engineering and product management, TechnoServe Labs.
Sumer Johal, the Executive Director of AgStack said, “This consortium will begin the virtuous cycle of building the sustainable open source community. The community will create components of pre-competitive technology that all stakeholders - including large companies, state agencies and farmers - need in order to efficiently meet EUDR requirements on a global scale. An inclusive process will create tremendous value and encourage more stakeholders to join the community. Think of it as a community building a road to a destination which everyone can use instead of everyone building their own road, which no one else can use. As we grow engagement, we would expect the community to develop other pieces of DPI, such as traceability which can be used for EUDR compliance and operational improvements.”
About the Forest Data Partnership
Initiated in October 2021, this five-year partnership, coordinated by the World Resources Institute (WRI) with support from USAID and the U.S. Department of State, brings together leading organizations, governments and private sector partners to collectively address the challenge of improving land use data. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and WRI are leading the development of the data ecosystem by convening public and private sector stakeholders, providing governance and facilitation, and maintaining technical facilities for implementation. SERVIR, a joint initiative of NASA, USAID and leading geospatial organizations, are building capacity to use geospatial data at national and regional levels through its network of hubs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Google is supporting the initiative as the key technology partner and platform provider. Unilever serves as the private sector lead for launching the ecosystem and coordinating private sector involvement.
About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDX, Zephyr, and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org. The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
About TechnoServe
Founded in 1968, TechnoServe is a leader in harnessing the power of the private sector to help people lift themselves out of poverty for good. A non-profit organization working in around 35 countries, we work with people to build a better future through regenerative farms, businesses, and markets that increase incomes. Our vision is a sustainable world where all people in low-income communities have the opportunity to prosper.