EU market access · Kenya
Catch the rejection
before it’s planted.
A consignment turned back at Rotterdam costs more than the crop that filled it. SoftFarm screens every fertiliser and pesticide before it touches the plant, keeps the records an auditor asks for, and traces each carton from a smallholder’s plot to the EU buyer who received it.
Producer app and exporter portal · English and Kiswahili · Works on the phone in the field.
- Reg (EC) 1107/2009
- Reg (EC) 396/2005 MRLs
- GLOBALG.A.P. registers
- Farm-to-buyer traceability
Dursban 4E
Read from label photo · Capsicum, Block B
Do not apply to a crop destined for the EU. Approval was not renewed under Reg (EC) No 1107/2009, so the default limit of determination in Reg (EC) No 396/2005 applies — any detectable residue is a breach.
The problem
The rejection happens in Europe. The mistake happened months earlier, at the agrovet.
By the time a border inspection finds a residue, the crop is picked, packed, shipped and paid for. The exporter absorbs the loss, the buyer downgrades the relationship, and the smallholder who sprayed a legally-sold product in good faith is the one dropped from the group.
Almost every one of those failures is knowable on the day the input is bought — if someone reads the label against the current EU rules. That is the job SoftFarm automates.
A product can be perfectly legal in Kenya and still cost you the European market. Why the check has to happen at the point of purchase, not at the border.
- Screened at
- Point of purchase
- Decided by
- Deterministic rules
- Traced across
- Farm → EU buyer
- Spoken in
- English & Kiswahili
How it works
Four moments, one unbroken record
Every step writes to the same chain, so the compliance evidence is a by-product of doing the work rather than a folder assembled the night before an audit.
Check the input
Photograph the label or type the product name. The reader pulls out the active substances and the rules engine returns SAFE, RISKY or UNCLEAR — with the regulation it relied on and safer alternatives for the same pest.
Record the work
Spray and fertiliser applications, harvest intervals, residue tests, water sources, equipment calibration and worker training land in GLOBALG.A.P.-shaped registers as they happen.
Dispatch to the packhouse
A dispatch carries its crop, its spray history and its residue results across the tenant boundary into the exporter’s goods receipt — no re-keying, no lost provenance.
Trace and answer
Pack runs, pallets and sales orders keep the thread intact. Ask which buyers hold produce from one plot, or which plots fed one lot, and get the answer in a single query.
Verdicts a farmer sees
Advisory the record keeps
The compliance engine
AI reads the label. Rules decide the verdict.
The split matters. A vision model is good at reading a sun-bleached label in Kiswahili and pulling out “chlorpyrifos 480 g/L”. It is the wrong thing to trust with a regulatory judgement.
- Extraction is AI. Label photo or product name in; active substances, concentrations and registration numbers out — OCR and translation included.
- The decision is deterministic. Substances are matched against the EU active-substance table, approval status and MRLs. The same input always yields the same verdict, and the verdict is reproducible without a model call.
- Every answer is cited. Approval status under Reg (EC) No 1107/2009; residue limits under Reg (EC) No 396/2005, defaulting to 0.01 mg/kg where no specific MRL exists.
- Unclear is a real answer. When the label cannot be read well enough, the system says so instead of guessing — and tells the farmer what to do next.
- Alternatives, not just refusals. A blocked product comes back with EU-approved substances registered for the same pest and crop, including organic-permitted options.
Cross-tenant traceability
One question SQL is bad at, answered in one hop
The producer and the exporter are separate tenants with separate data. The chain that matters runs straight through the boundary between them — and that is exactly the query an auditor, a buyer or a recall asks you to run.
Every link in this chain is recorded as the work happens — the spray, the delivery, the pack run, the pallet, the order. Answering a question about it is a lookup, not an investigation.
Forward trace
Start at a plot or a spray record and find every carton, pallet, order and buyer it ended up in.
Backward trace
Start at a buyer complaint or a lot code and walk back to the farms, crops and applications behind it.
Exposure and risk
Standing views for supplier risk, buyer concentration, co-mingled lots and mass-balance leaks.
Two apps, one backbone
Built for both ends of the consignment
Producers and exporters run different businesses with different obligations. They share one data model, so the handover between them is a link rather than a spreadsheet.
For producers
Input checks, crop and spray diaries, residue tests, GLOBALG.A.P. registers and audit readiness, dispatches, livestock, inventory and farm finance — on a phone, in English or Kiswahili.
What producers get
For exporters
Supplier links, goods receipts and quality checks, production plans, pack runs, pallets, cold chain, mass balance, sales orders, export documents, invoicing and recall dossiers.
What exporters get
The whole platform
Compliance is the edge. It is still a full farm and packhouse system.
EU compliance
Label reader, product lookup, input-versus-crop advisories, alternatives, crop doctor, MRL imports, active-substance reference data.
GLOBALG.A.P.
Registers and diaries, scheduled tasks, printable forms, document control, audit-readiness dashboard, residue tests, mass balance.
Crops & fields
Crop catalogue, planted crops, blocks, seasons, soil analyses, units of measure.
Livestock
Breeds, farmed livestock records and the events attached to them.
Packhouse
Suppliers and external suppliers, incoming dispatches, goods receipts, quality checks, production planning, pack runs, pallets, storage zones and cold chain.
Commercial
Buyers, sales orders, export documents, purchase orders, vendors, invoicing and finished-goods inventory.
Finance
Double-entry accounting posted automatically from operational events, chart of accounts, journals, reports and payroll with work logs.
Platform
Multi-tenant farms, role-based access control, invitations, Google sign-in, audit logs, global search and a super-admin console.
See the whole chain break, then see it caught.
A smallholder sprays a product that is legal in Kenya and banned in Europe. The residue test fails. The lot is packed, palletised and shipped — and the exporter’s exposure screen names the German buyer holding it. Every step of that was knowable on the day the product was bought.