HyperT (HyperTransparency)

PROJECTSSFF

Mar 24

Written By AgTrace • BrCarbon • BrainAg • Um grau e meio

Integrated platform for traceability, monitoring, and carbon credit

An online platform in blockchain format for socio-environmental diagnosis of rural properties, focused on the soybean supply chain, but valid for any other agricultural commodity. This is the proposal of HyperT - or Hypertransparency - an integrated traceability, big data, monitoring, and carbon credit tool developed by four startups in the Sustainable Soy in the Cerrado Program portfolio, who were selected for financial support from the Startup Finance Facility to foster innovative solutions. Combining their own technical knowledge and multiple areas of expertise, AgTrace, BrainAg, brCarbon, and Umgrauemeio plan to launch the platform this April to facilitate farmers' access to a market that is increasingly committed to sustainable, low-carbon agriculture, and a deforestation and conversion-free (DCF) soy supply chain.

With HyperT platform, the startups produces a complete analysis of each farm, including any documentation lacking for its socio-environmental regularization, how to prevent fires and environmental damage, the potential for financial returns from carbon credits in areas with surplus native vegetation and for ecological restoration, and a risk assessment of the conversion of legal reserve areas to farmland. The platform benefits both farmers and the agricultural commodities market, since the landowner can measure the value of standing forests and convert it into carbon credits, while companies can generate incentive programs for farms committed to socio-environmental issues.

Integrated Solution:

AgTrace, specialized in data traceability with blockchain, laid the base for integrating systems to consolidate information on a single platform. Big data startup BrainAg added access to public social, environmental and landholding data to be evaluated by the tool, along with a checklist of farm-related social and environmental criteria. With extensive experience in forest carbon projects, brCarbon's initiative offers the possibility of contracting climate solutions with carbon market resources, from feasibility studies to final negotiations. Climate tech One and a Half Degrees then brought to the platform its Pantera system for natural resource management, with fire risk analysis and daily alerts of hot spots on the property.

Together, the four startups add value and market potential to this collaborative platform with integrated solutions to some of the most frequent demands of today's agricultural market. And they also improve the portfolio and quality of the services they provide individually. With the partnership, for example, brCarbon incorporated an application developed by AgTrace to collect field data from forest inventories, previously done manually. The socio-environmental checklist offered by BrainAg is now also a differential for AgTrace services. BrCarbon's own work now uses the initial legal and land-ownership checklist developed by BrainAg, a facilitator for carbon project feasibility studies, and Umgrauemeio benefits from the blockchain traceability service offered by AgTrace.

Pilot Project:

While developing the pilot project, the HyperT startup team enjoyed the support of soy farmer Lucas Goulart, a member of the For Farmers Program. On his more than 6,000-hectare farm in the interior of Maranhão, inside the Cerrado biome, he already receives daily fire alerts generated by Umgrauemeio. With direct access to the Pantera system and its risk map calculated from a meteorological index, anthropic variables, and history of occurrences in the region, he can also enter additional data about fire brigades, water catchment points and factory locations in order to have access to even more detailed information about hot spots on the farm.

BrCarbon has already gone into the field to collect data for the forest biomass inventory, fed into the HyperT system's newly developed application, and correlated it with information obtained by the drone, to generate an equation for optimizing the calculation of carbon stock. "Once the equation is validated, we can apply it for calculations on other farms. The data in blockchain ensure the project's credibility and agility. All photos and evidence are integrated into the platform, making the auditing process for carbon credit certification much simpler, faster, and transparent", explains Bruna Azevedo, from brCarbon.

BrainAg, on the other hand, provided access to the Farmer ID application, part of the HyperT platform, to access the farms' socio-environmental analyses, documents, and certificates. BrainAg also surveyed the surplus native vegetation in two municipalities in Maranhão – Balsas and São Raimundo das Mangueiras – to prepare a database of potential conservation areas that might generate carbon credits and financial returns in areas eligible for REDD+ projects.