EUDR compliance: due diligence reports, DDS and EU TRACES submission

What does EUDR compliance actually involve?

The EU Deforestation Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1115) asks companies that place cocoa, coffee, rubber, palm oil and other relevant commodities on the EU market to prove three things: the product is deforestation-free, it was produced in line with the laws of the country of production, and it is covered by a due diligence statement.

In practice, due diligence has three steps:

1. Collect information, including the geolocation of every plot of land where the commodity was produced.
2. Assess the risk that the product is linked to deforestation after 31 December 2020 or to illegal production.
3. Mitigate the risk until it is negligible, and document what was done.

Only then can the operator submit a DDS to EU TRACES, the EUDR Information System. For the full regulatory picture, see our EUDR guide.

Why is the first mile the hard part?

The regulation looks simple on paper. The difficulty sits with the smallholders who grow the crop. Plot data is often missing, recorded by hand, or collected several times by different buyers with different results. Polygons fail validation. Farmers sell through intermediaries who cannot say which plot a bag came from.

Farmer1st is the first-mile infrastructure built around farmers: a farmer-controlled network where companies, governments and organisations collect, verify and share origin data, and build the services they need on top of it. EUDR compliance is one of the modules on that network.

How does Farmer1st produce the due diligence?

We start from the farmer and the plot, and work up to the shipment.

• Farmer and plot registry. Existing lists are imported through data integration. Missing farmers and plots are collected by field teams working offline, managed through field agent management.
• Geolocation you can defend. Our geo and polygons service validates every polygon and point: self-intersections, overlaps between neighbours, implausible areas, and points used where a polygon is required.
• Deforestation and protected areas. Each plot is assessed against the cut-off date using multiple sources and EU-recognised forest baselines, up to today. You choose the calculation method: ours, a public reference method such as Whisp from FAO, or a model that follows your own risk policy.
• Chain of custody. Plots are linked to lots and shipments through our traceability module, so each DDS lists the right plots and nothing else.

What do you receive at the end?

For each shipment, lot or supplier, depending on how you organise your due diligence:

Everything stays versioned. When a plot is corrected or re-assessed, the previous version is kept, so you can show what you knew at the time you submitted.

How do you handle plots that fail the checks?

A failing plot is a signal to act on. Farmer1st isolates it at plot level, so one problem does not block a whole cooperative. The plot is flagged, the reason is recorded, and a field mission can be sent to re-walk the boundary or verify the situation on the ground. The outcome, whether a corrected polygon, a documented explanation or an exclusion, becomes part of the due diligence file.

Does this fit with the tools we already use?

Yes. We complement the ecosystem rather than replace it. Farmer1st connects to the field tools, ERPs and compliance platforms you already run. Some companies use us as the first-mile data layer that feeds verified plots into their compliance system; others ask us to produce and submit the DDS end to end.

What if our case is not covered yet?

Modules switch on as you need them. If your supply chain calls for something specific, such as a particular risk model, an extra legality check or a reporting format for a customer, we prototype it with you in the Nursery and refine it until it fits the way you work.