Written by: Sarah Leonhardt
When Juan Pablo Duque, founder and CEO of Equilibria, rented his first two Colombian cattle farms with the mission of turning them into sustainably grown lime farms, he didn’t expect converting the land to be so difficult.
“For years, the cows were compacting the soil,” Duque explains, adding that “the [previous] farmer who had cattle developed a very strong operation of grass. Changing grass into a new crop is very difficult… if you want to highlight something, highlight that this is very challenging, very, very challenging, and that's why the average [farmer] age is 58 years old.”
But Duque’s dream was powerful: carbon-zero lime farms and native forests occupying degraded land that used to house cattle, the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide.
Fast forward to today, and Duque has not only achieved his carbon-zero farms, but set a standard of sustainable, equitable business that ripples out worldwide — enough to win his company “best global agtech startup” at US investment fair SelectUSA this year. Equilibria conserves 44 hectares of native forests for every 100 hectares they farm, cultivates their own Tahitian lime nursery of high-quality, heirloom trees, and — perhaps most importantly to Duque — provides knowledge, technical assistance, and fair wages to the small farmers they partner with throughout Colombia.
“I want to build a sustainable operation where the grower is empowered with tools and fair income,”
Duque says. “What we need is a dollar that doesn't stay in the city with the exporter. We want that dollar to move as much as possible to the grower. [It’s an] opportunity for rural families — they can have a better quality of living if we can take the income as much as possible to those places. That will be the formula, or part of the formula, for building peace in my country.”
Investment Development Hub (IDH) reVive is currently partnering with Equilibria, providing strategy consulting, investment readiness coaching, and tech solutions to help the company secure an even bigger foothold in the agricultural supply chain. Equilibria has a capital goal of $10 million USD, and one of the company’s most promising allures for investors is their app, EqApp.
“Years ago, we started building an app for our own operation,” Duque says. “It was not a software company making software. It was an agricultural company ecosystem building the medicine for its own pain.”
Equilibria’s “pain” was the process of integrating smallholder farmers into its operations — meeting the supply demands of large buyers like Walmart or Dole, who have found a customer base for responsibly grown produce and are in the process of starting a partnership with Equilibria where product volume and consistency will be key.
“The supply chain is broken and is failing at both ends,” Duque says. “On the side of the grower, they don’t receive a decent income…[and in Colombia], only 17% of growers were able to receive technical assistance.” On the other end of the chain are retailers “exposed to regulatory pressures,” as well as pressure to “find a new supply chain that works for the people, the planet, the retailer, the consumer.”
What EqApp does is streamline knowledge sharing, allowing small farms to adopt Equilibria’s proven practices while also improving the company’s ability to keep accurate tabs on production. On the EqApp, farmers can easily upload reports about production and quality, helping Equilibria’s agronomist quickly see data and provide assistance. Duque shares that before the app, they were able to reach one farm a day to evaluate production in person; now, they expect to build a business able to evaluate 50 growers a day. The EqApp also simplifies certification processes for growers, which is necessary for exporting their produce.
reVive is helping to develop one of the most important features of EqApp: it has to work offline. “The penetration of the internet in Colombia is 28% in the rural areas,” Duque shares.
He states that working with reVive has been “amazing.” “They give you resources in terms of capital. But on top of that — brain power.”
Equilibria and reVive’s number one partnership goal is to “democratize access to the tools.” Improving growers’ quality and production will lead to increased exporting opportunities, higher incomes, and better quality of life for farmers. “That objective is going to be achieved if we have a better app, and also if we have a better go-to market strategy.”
reVive is the first technical assistance hub created as part of Conservation International and IDH’s project, “Building the next generation Land Degradation Neutrality investment pipeline through national Technical Assistance Hubs.” With plans to expand beyond Colombia, the hubs are key for helping forward-thinking, sustainable, and responsible business models scale. Investment-ready roadmaps, a grants budget, and a skilled network of specialized technical assistance providers are just a few of the hub’s tools for expansion.
Ultimately, it’s an innovative approach to amplify the success of companies like Equilibria — companies seeking social and environmental returns alongside financial ones.
“The quality that I like to talk about is the quality that the consumer doesn’t see,” Duque says. “That you pay fair wages, that you don't cut the trees, that you don't contaminate the waters, that you have traceability of the dollar that you are taking back to the grower.”
The more that Juan Pablo Duque’s way of doing business can spread and grow, the greater the changes we’ll reap for our farmers, our planet, and our future.
Credits:
Conservation International