What is the name of your organization?
Sprout, Inc
What is the name of your solution?
Climate Smart Coffee
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
A farmer-first system with AI and satellite data-based tools we built to reward climate-smart agriculture—linking coffee sales to climate impact
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
San Francisco, CA, USA
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
United States
What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Climate change is rapidly destabilizing coffee production across the tropics, threatening the livelihoods of more than 12.5 million smallholder farmers globally. These farmers face increasingly erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and new waves of pests and diseases—putting both their crops and incomes at risk. Despite being on the frontlines of climate change, most smallholder farmers lack access to the tools, funding, or information needed to adapt.
At the same time, there is growing demand from roasters and consumers for sustainable, traceable coffee. But they are unable to verify whether climate-smart practices are being used, or whether farmers are truly benefiting from sustainability programs. There is no reliable infrastructure to connect those who grow coffee with those who drink it in a way that builds trust, transparency, and mutual accountability.
The core problem is not just environmental—it’s systemic. Farmer investments in climate resilience remain invisible and unrewarded. Consumer purchases are disconnected from climate impact. This disconnect leads to underinvestment in adaptation, despite widespread interest and goodwill across the value chain.
Without shared infrastructure to track, verify, and reward action, smallholder coffee farmers remain deeply vulnerable to climate shocks—and disconnected from the very markets that could help them thrive.
What is your solution?
Climate Smart Coffee is a sustainability system that supports smallholder coffee farmers in adapting to climate change while rewarding them for climate-smart practices. Our solution combines AI, mobile messaging, insurance, and a digital certification label to build resilience from the ground up.
Farmers receive localized, AI-powered climate advisories and early warnings via WhatsApp or SMS—making regenerative practices more timely and actionable. We pair this with satellite-informed crop insurance, ensuring farmers are protected financially when extreme weather strikes.
What makes our system unique is how we connect verified farmer action with roasters and consumers through radical transparency. As farmers implement regenerative techniques, we track and verify their progress using satellite and mobile data. A digital certification label then surfaces this impact to roasters and consumers—closing the loop between production, climate action, and accountability.
Coffee sales—particularly through U.S.-based diaspora roasters—fund the tools and services that farmers receive. This creates a mutual value chain where farmers grow resilient coffee, roasters market true sustainability, and consumers support climate action with each cup.
We’re live in Kenya and scaling across the tropics, creating a system where every stakeholder participates in climate resilience.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Sprout’s Climate Smart Coffee program serves smallholder farmers in the tropics who grow coffee for export and live on less than $10 a day. Most face climate shocks—heat, drought, erratic rain—and have little access to insurance, localized climate information, or financial tools.
We work directly with cooperatives that represent these farmers. In Kenya alone, over 10,000 farmers are engaged and eager to sell their coffee as Climate Smart Coffee. Cooperatives are onboarded through connections with buyers and by claiming their free profile on sproutprotect.com, giving them visibility and access to support.
Farmers receive real-time WhatsApp alerts to help them respond to local climate risks. In Kenya, they are also covered by satellite-triggered crop insurance—subsidized in the first three years through the Climate Smart Coffee Fund. This allows time for education, trust-building, and increased yields.
We serve farmers by making their climate efforts visible, verified, and valuable—both through insurance and through recognition by roasters who use the Climate Smart Coffee label. Countries currently onboarded include Kenya, Guatemala, Cameroon, and Rwanda—with systems in place for both early warning and market connection.
