Producer registry: one unique ID, no duplicates

Everything starts with the registry

Traceability, payments, premiums, compliance: each of these depends on knowing who your producers are. If two records refer to the same person, if a plot has no owner, or if a producer has left the cooperative without anyone noting it, all the data built on top inherits the error.

The producer registry is therefore not just a directory. It is the reference to which every plot, every purchase and every payment is linked.

What a registry must contain

The content depends on your needs. A core set comes up almost every time:

• a unique ID, assigned once and never reused;
• the producer’s identity and contact details, including the phone number used for mobile money;
• their affiliation: cooperative, section, village;
• their plots, each with its own ID and geolocation;
• the dates the record was created and modified, and who made each change.

Only collect what serves a specific purpose. Every extra field costs time in the field and increases the amount of personal data to protect.

Duplicates, the first problem to tackle

The same producer may sell to several cooperatives, change phone number or be registered under two spellings. Duplicates distort volumes per producer and complicate payments. They can also make a database unusable for a buyer.

Effective checks combine several criteria: name, date of birth, village, phone number, identity document where one exists. A resemblance is not enough to merge two records. The decision belongs to someone who knows the field, and it must be recorded.

Linking producers, plots and purchases

The registry becomes valuable when it is linked to everything else:

• to plots, with their GPS point or polygon;
• to purchases, to know who delivered what and when;
• to payments and premiums, to know who received what.

For products covered by the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), this link is a requirement. The regulation requires the geolocation of the plots of land where the commodities were produced: a point is enough for a plot of 4 hectares or less; above that, a polygon is required. Lots must also be traceable to these plots. Large and medium-sized operators are subject to it from 30 December 2026, micro and small operators from 30 June 2027. Our EUDR guide details these obligations.

Reuse what exists rather than recount everything

Many organisations already have lists: cooperative files, project censuses, certification audit data, mapping carried out by different providers. Before launching a new census, it is often better to:

1. gather these sources;
2. compare them to identify duplicates and contradictions;
3. check a sample of doubtful records in the field;
4. only survey what is missing.

This takes method: keep track of where each piece of data and each correction came from.

Protecting producers’ data

A registry contains personal data. It must comply with the country’s data protection law. In Côte d'Ivoire, this is Law No. 2013-450 of 19 June 2013 on the protection of personal data, enforced by ARTCI (Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunications/TIC de Côte d'Ivoire). In practice:

• inform producers of how their data is used and obtain their consent where required;
• restrict access by role;
• only share with a buyer what the buyer needs.

Keeping the registry alive from one season to the next

A registry deteriorates if no one updates it: new members, departures, deaths, plots transferred or replanted. Plan an update before each season, and decide who in the cooperative approves changes.

How Kaada Group supports you

We design and roll out producer registries suited to your organisation: migration and cleaning of your existing files, offline data collection, links to plots, purchases and mobile money payments, and training for the teams who keep it up to date. Producers and cooperatives.

Sources

Reference sources, as of 11 October 2026.

• European Commission, EUDR page
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 (EUDR), EUR-Lex
• ARTCI, list of laws (in French)