Collecting plot data from cooperatives and smallholders under the EUDR

For most coffee operators the hardest part of the EUDR is not the paperwork, it is getting reliable coordinates for hundreds or thousands of producing plots out of origin. The regulation requires the geolocation of all plots of land where the coffee was produced (Art. 9(1)(d)). Cooperatives hold that data in every imaginable format: GeoJSON exports, spreadsheets, GPS apps, sometimes a photographed list.

Who is responsible for the data being right

The Commission's FAQ is unambiguous. Operators may collect geolocation through intermediaries such as cooperatives, certification bodies or national traceability systems, and may use the producer's own geolocation data. But the operator is legally responsible for the information being correct, regardless of how it was collected, and it is the operator, not the producer, who is ultimately responsible for its accuracy (FAQ 1.10 and 1.11, May 2026 edition).

FAQ 1.12 goes further: operators need to verify and be able to prove that the geolocation is correct, and providing incorrect information is itself a breach of the regulation. That sentence is the reason data collection cannot be a black box.

What that means for how you collect

• Keep the original. Whatever the supplier delivered is the source record; if a boundary is adjusted later, you need to show what changed and why.
• Check geometry against the Information System's actual rejection rules before filing, not after: open rings, self-intersections, coordinate precision, polygons for plots over four hectares.
• Never let software repair a boundary silently. Closing an open ring or snapping to six decimals changes nothing about the parcel and can be applied and logged. Splitting a self-intersecting shape or swapping swapped coordinates changes the declared geometry, and that decision belongs to a person.
• Make the supplier's job small. A cooperative agronomist on a phone will deliver more accurate data through a guided flow in their browser than through an account-based system nobody logs into.

How Sylva does it

Sylva gives each supplier a personal intake link that works on a phone with no account. The supplier delivers a plot list (GeoJSON, CSV, a PDF, even a photographed list), the geometry is checked against the Information System's documented rejection rules, and the result comes back in plain language: what was normalised and logged, what needs the operator's decision, what is blocked and why. Nothing enters the operator's records until the operator reviews and approves it, with the original geometry preserved. That is the verify-and-prove trail FAQ 1.12 asks for.