Solving scope 3 challenges: Geora seeks agribusiness collaborations

Geora is supporting businesses and producers in preparation for the sustainability metrics that will be required for future supplier decisions. The data-tracking company is seeking collaboration with companies looking to track scope 3 emissions and invest in better sustainability outcomes across their farmer network.

CEO Bridie Ohlsson, Co-founder of Geora presenting at the evokeᴬᴳ⋅ 2023 Investor Pitch Night

Author

Tim Vetter Date 25 July 2023 Share

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Geora connects verifiable sustainability initiatives across the agri-supply chain with markets and finance, providing farmers and agribusinesses with simple tools to benchmark and financially reward positive nature and climate outcomes.

CEO Bridie Ohlsson, who co-founded the company with AgriDigital colleague Cadel Watson, said interest in the company has erupted since Geora added nature and carbon credits to the blockchain, enabling agri-networks to trade and invest in verified and traceable impact credits in the form of supply chain insets.

“We’ve been methodically building the business for the last four years. The first hurdle was to establish an insights and integrity engine for us to prove impact across the agri-supply chain. Off the back of that data system, we can provide the financial incentives,” said Bridie.

“We initially piloted with large players like Rabobank and CBH Group whilst inside AgriDigital. Now we have a partnership with NAB to make financial incentives through insets and green loans available to all Australian farmers through the platform.

“We originally raised our seed round to scale-up operations, and we’ve hit our goals really quickly. The launch of climate and nature credits within the platform creates an entirely new source of revenue back to our producers and a new source of revenue for us as a business.

“We’ve built a platform that operates really well across agricultural networks. We onboard agri-companies who are processors, food manufacturers or traders, and they bring their farmer suppliers into the platform.”

With such growing demand for its solution, Geora is seeking to collaborate with food and agribusinesses interested in making direct investments in their food supply chain to solve the challenges of scope 3 tracking and reduction.

RELATED: Interested in Geora’s partnership opportunity? Learn more here.

Verified traceability data overcomes ‘greenwashing’

Geora is the first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) blockchain platform in agriculture to link traceability data with financing solutions using simple, no-code digital tools, and has over 40,000 agricultural assets tracked through the platform.

A key feature is being able to certify a specific metric or outcome on the blockchain using direct integrations with other platforms, devices and third parties to provide evidence to support that fact. This information is aggregated to a single asset record stored as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Geora platform, a permissioned Ethereum-based blockchain.

In January 2023, NAB reported its first customers had begun inputting data via the Geora platform on sustainability targets such as ground cover and livestock health, as part of the conditions of NAB’s Agri Green Loan.

Image of the Geora platform, the first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) blockchain platform in agriculture.

“We’re building out financial infrastructure for nature and climate impact, to help overcome the challenge of greenwashing, by being able to secure the data that backs an impact metric or certification which is verified by the technology itself,” said Bridie.

“We're really nimble in integrating information from other sources to work with our customers. Everyone is at a different stage when it comes to benchmarking, reducing and investing in sustainability so we meet them where they are to improve their information to get better finance and better credit prices. It starts to have a snowball effect.

“When we look at metrics, Geora has had 0% churn of customers for the past 18 months. So, we've been steadily onboarding customers and they're all still using the platform.”

Transition behaviour focused on purse strings, not heart strings

Bridie believes Geora’s focus has to be on pulling the purse strings, rather than the heart strings. To ensure agriculture’s sustainability, transition behaviour must be linked to economic incentives and financial flows.

“The most important supply chain transaction for seeing this transformation is at the farm gate, where the producer gets paid. So, our customer is an agribusiness that's probably a co-operative, or a processor or a trader buying from a network of producers,” she said.

“They come onto our platform and set up a data standard and invite their network of producers to use Geora to track their produce, and then trade and finance off the back of that data.

“We have this great network effect happening at the moment – as our networks grow, so does our ability to connect the entire value chain and offer new products and insights as we get more participants in the Geora platform.”

To support Geora's mission to deliver financial incentives and encourage green behaviours across the agri-supply chain, Geora operates an insights engine to provide businesses with real-time feedback on their nature and climate outcomes.

Great data leads to green credits

Geora is often mistaken as another traceability platform, but it’s a classification Bridie doesn’t agree with.

“We really don't think that traceability is an incentive for behavioural change. Sure, if you've got great data, you can tell a marketing story, but the incentive is how we use the data to access finance or provide additional revenue,” she said.

“If we can track a green loan and the activities that it’s financing on-farm – and Geora can do that – it means we can pass onto the bank or the lender, a green credit that's associated with those activities and that loan.

“With that green credit, the bank can issue and sell financial products, like green liabilities and green term deposits. So, it's starting with this farm gate transaction, but the vision and what we offer is so much bigger in terms of the finance opportunity.

“We’re flipping the risk to the lender by providing data backing and verification. And you can see in real time exactly what's happening on-farm, so it what they can do as a lender.”

Family picture of a NAB customer from Leather Cattle Company — Geora provides an additional layer of transparency to the Agri Green Loan book by creating trustworthy records of impact that the NAB customer, in this case Leather Cattle Company, can share with interested stakeholders in the beef supply chain.

Empowering sustainable agriculture worldwide

Geora already has a presence in Australia and Singapore and is set for an exciting future.

“We know Geora’s digital records are being inspected all over the world. We have customers in Indonesia and coffee growers in Colombia trading with an Australian customer, so we're seeing this natural push particularly into South America and Asia. The EU also represents a huge opportunity for us with mandatory carbon reporting frameworks,” said Bridie.

“It's exciting to see the big agricultural companies that have set sustainability goals but are unsure where to start, seeing real financial reasons to adopt technology and to start investing in meaningful outcomes for their value chain. Coming onto our platform is a huge indicator of this, and I think that means big things for the next few years.”

If you are interested in Geora’s partnership opportunity enquire to find out more here.