Agrobiodiversity (chagra & rare crops)

In short

Payments for rare-crop preservation, traditional chagra systems and Indigenous agricultural knowledge, extending beyond sales into food security and reforestation.

What it is

Savimbo Agrobiodiversity is one of several payment layers Savimbo offers to smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities that steward tropical forest, mainly in the Colombian Amazon. It rewards preservation of rare and traditional crops, chagra polyculture systems, and Indigenous agricultural knowledge, and it supports organic certification so farmers can reduce pesticide use and earn higher prices. Payments are tied to maintaining diverse crop species, and Savimbo shares a portion of credit revenue directly with the grower who originated the credit. The program was still undergoing certification and refinement at the time of review.

What it rewards

The reward is a credit called a Savimbo Agrobiodiversity Credit (SAC). One credit stands for one hectare of healthy ecosystem kept protected for one month. A verified gain in agricultural biodiversity, tied to food security and local livelihoods. A whole period of work is issued as one batch of credits at a time, in the same way a registry issues a batch.

What gets measured

To earn SAC credits, a project has to measure and prove a few things. An independent reviewer checks the evidence before any credits are issued.

• Crop species & traditional varieties. Rewards rare crops, traditional varieties and chagra polyculture.

• Crop diversity / richness. Payments tied to maintaining a diversity of crop species.

• Chagra polyculture system. Traditional chagra systems and Indigenous knowledge are the object.

• Rare / threatened crop status. Preservation of rare crops is the payment trigger.

• Plot area & duration. Unit is hectare-month over the stewarded plot.

Who takes part

• Standard Registry. Owns the policy, approves participants, anchors each issuance to its evidence.

• Project Proponent. Registers the project and submits monitoring reports.

• Validation & Verification Body. Independently validates the design and verifies monitored data.

How it works

1. 1

   The project team registers the project and its plan.

2. 2

   An independent reviewer checks that the plan is sound and that the benefit is real and would not have happened anyway.

3. 3

   The team looks after the site and measures the agreed indicators over time.

4. 4

   The independent reviewer verifies those measurements.

5. 5

   Credits are issued for the verified result, and a buyer can retire a credit to claim the benefit once.