Akanksha Barot · How I can help · Certification and standards bodies
Certification and standards bodies
Audit evidence that gets produced because the work happened, not because someone filled in a form afterwards.
Certification for smallholders has a structural problem: the evidence a standard needs is produced by the person with the least time, the least literacy and the least direct benefit. Systems that ignore this get compliance data that is complete and untrue. The design goal is a chain of custody where every record was generated by someone doing their job anyway.
Who this is for
Whether this page is about you.
- Certification schemes and standards bodies working with smallholder supply chains.
- Sustainability and compliance teams facing due diligence regulation on imported commodities.
- Organisations moving a farmer base off paper record keeping.
What usually goes wrong
Three problems I keep meeting.
- 01
The evidence burden lands on the person with the least capacity
A smallholder is asked to keep records that serve a buyer four countries away. Unless capture is a by-product of an action they were taking anyway, such as a sale, a delivery or an agent visit, the records get reconstructed at audit time and the whole chain becomes decorative.
- 02
Moving off paper is a change management problem in a software budget
Paper registers work. They are offline, they need no charge, and everyone already knows how. Replacing them means the digital version has to be faster on the day. Being better at reporting later is not enough. Most rollouts get this backwards and then blame adoption.
- 03
Chain of custody breaks at aggregation
Individual plots are traceable and the moment produce is aggregated at a collection point the link is usually lost, or preserved only as an assertion. Where the granularity breaks is a design decision, and it should be made openly rather than discovered during an audit.
What backs it
Every claim names where it came from.
A lot-level passport with the chain from farmer to buyer and the evidence timeline behind it. Figure four on the home page is rebuilt from the production product rather than mocked up for the site.
Rebuilt from the shipped productHarvest purchase was one of four core services on the Jiva platform: quality capture, price agreement, weighment and payment. That transaction is the natural place for evidence to be created, because both parties care about getting it right.
Jiva AgServices, Indonesia, Product Lead, 2021 to 2025Visit planning and field coordination, with what is outstanding at each stop. Agent visits are the other point where evidence can be captured without adding a task to a farmer’s day.
Jiva field coordination product. Roughly 30 percent productivity gain.Relevant here
The product streams this segment usually needs.
- Traceability
A chain of custody from plot to buyer where every record was produced by someone doing their job anyway.
Source: Rebuilt as figure four on the home page from the production product. - Crop and produce procurement
Harvest purchase: quality capture, price agreement, weighment, and payment that lands when it was promised.
Source: Jiva, one of four core services on the direct-to-farmer platform. - Field agent management
Visit planning, sequencing, coordination and what each agent is accountable for by the end of the day.
Source: Jiva field coordination product, Indonesia. Roughly 30 percent field staff productivity gain. - Leadership reporting
The internal view leadership actually steers on, rather than the deck assembled the night before the board call.
Source: Internal operations tooling at AgriCentral and Jiva. - Farmer advisory
Agronomy guidance a farmer acts on the same week, in the language and at the reading level they actually have. In AgriCentral that meant seven languages, activity schedules built from the crop and the sowing date, and a question channel answered by agronomists and by other farmers.
Source: AgriCentral, Head of Product 2018–2021, launched 31 December 2018. Jiva, Product Lead 2021–2025.
How it runs
What working together looks like.
- 01
Design the evidence into the workflow
Find every point where a record can be a by-product of an existing action, and design the standard’s requirements onto those points.
- 02
Decide the granularity honestly
Where the chain holds at plot level, where it holds at collection point, and where it is an assertion. Documented rather than implied.
- 03
Transition farmers off paper
A rollout that gives the farmer and the agent something on day one, with the paper register running alongside until the digital version is faster.
Questions
Asked before, answered straight.
How do you get accurate records from farmers who do not benefit from them?
You stop asking them to. Capture the evidence at the moments where interests already align: the sale, where both sides want the weight and the price right; the delivery; the agent visit. Records generated as a by-product of a transaction are far more reliable than records generated to satisfy a standard, because someone would notice if they were wrong.
What happens to traceability when produce is aggregated?
It usually degrades, and the useful thing is to be explicit about where. A system can hold plot-level identity to the collection point and then carry a documented mass balance beyond it. Stating that clearly is more defensible than a whole-chain claim that quietly rests on an assumption at the aggregation step.
Our farmers use paper registers. Is digitising them the right first step?
Only if the digital version is faster for the person filling it in on the day. Paper is offline, needs no charge and has no learning curve. A replacement has to win on the immediate task first, then earn the reporting benefit afterwards. Rolling both in parallel for a season is usually worth the duplication.
Do you have experience with a specific certification standard?
Not with a named scheme, and I would not imply otherwise. My experience is the traceability and procurement product underneath: chain of custody, evidence capture and the field workflows that produce it. The specific requirements of a given standard are something your team would hold and I would design to.
Can this work alongside due diligence regulation on imported commodities?
The product problem is the same: a verifiable link from a plot to a shipment, with evidence that stands up when someone checks. What differs is which claims must be provable and to what granularity, and that is a question for your compliance team rather than for me. I would design to the answer they give.
What this record is, and what it is not
No named certification scheme appears on this record. What does is the layer underneath one: harvest purchase as a live transaction, field agent workflows that carry a record, and a traceability chain from plot to buyer. A scheme’s specific requirements are yours to hold. Designing capture so the evidence is a by-product of a sale rather than a second job is the part that is being offered.
Published elsewhere
- PodcastLearnings from 10M downloads with AgriCentral PM Akanksha BarotThe Crop Chronicles, by Jiva. Episode 5, 31 minutes
How AgriCentral reached ten million downloads, why the first year of adoption was slow, and what transferred to Indonesia.
- InterviewLessons from 10 million downloadsJiva, on Medium
The written version. Acquisition, the seven languages, and the interface decisions that came out of watching farmers hold a phone.