Swiss startup AdAstra Sustainability launched Orbae, a free web platform leveraging publicly available science to deepen the understanding of agricultural impacts. Orbae is the first technology to automatically calculate environmental metrics on land conversion for commodities worldwide in 30-meter resolution, enabling more targeted interventions to end deforestation.
Orbae provides open data on 11 major agricultural commodities — including palm, soy, sugarcane and corn — spread across more than 30 countries and their subnational jurisdictions. New commodities and countries will continue to be released over time. Users can access land use change emission factors for each dataset and view heatmaps of a commodity’s carbon intensity.
AdAstra co-founder and CEO Xavier Bengoa explained, “We’re making Orbae open so that companies can clearly see where land conversion is happening in their supply chains. From there, they can put their efforts toward doing something about it. Orbae gives all stakeholders a common language for talking about these impacts so that the conversation can finally move on from what the problem is to how to fix it.”
A new method to account for land conversion, aligned with leading international standards
Built on an algorithm from AdAstra that processes billions of satellite-based data points in 30-meter resolution or better, Orbae works field per field across an entire country to calculate the environmental costs of land conversion for each commodity. It takes into account where the crop is grown, land history over 20 years and carbon stocks, largely from peer-reviewed sources available in the public domain.
The method, called a jurisdictional direct land use change approach, reflects the reality of agriculture on the ground and can be aggregated to any area of interest so that it matches the known level of traceability. It follows the accounting principles set out in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and SBTi FLAG Guidance — the cornerstones of climate strategies for agrifood corporations.
Typical land conversion data used for carbon accounting rely on coarse statistical assessments that allocate a percentage of land conversion to each commodity assumed to be produced in that area. With the increased availability of high-quality earth observation products in recent years, Orbae injects new technology into the science of impact quantification to address a critical problem that has so far eluded scalable solutions.
Navigating the complexity of agricultural supply chains through collaboration
Six of the world’s largest food and agriculture companies have already adopted Orbae data — among them, Louis Dreyfus Company and ofi (Olam Food Ingredients) — and AdAstra is collaborating with other supporters globally to further expand its reach. With open data, information is accessible to corporations, NGOs, researchers and governments alike.
“We recognize the value of accessible, high-quality insights on land conversion that can lead to meaningful action on climate and nature,” says Christopher Schwarz, associate director at climate consultancy South Pole. “That’s why we welcome Orbae’s open-data approach — it’s a step forward in empowering businesses in the agriculture sector to design robust carbon accounting strategies that ultimately drive emission reductions.”
The growing network also includes the Global Feed LCA Institute; non-profit Proforest; transparency initiative Trase; and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Embrapa. Orbae is funded in part by Innosuisse, the Swiss innovation agency, which awarded AdAstra a grant of 1.3 million Swiss francs in 2023 to advance the development of its technology.
