The push by Mondelez, Lavazza, and, most recently, the European Parliament to delay the EUDR’s implementation is threatening to water down the law before it takes effect. That is according to Jon Trask, CEO of Dimitra, a blockchain company that helps farmers and smallholders achieve compliance, who said stakeholders in Asia and Africa are starting to lose faith in the process:
“When the EU pushed back the EUDR, it sent a message: this isn’t urgent. And that message landed hard in exporting countries. Farmers are losing faith, and momentum is collapsing,” Trask told Wood Central. “In Indonesia, working with Surveyor Indonesia, a state-owned enterprise, we launched a national campaign aimed at onboarding up to three million smallholder coffee and cacao farmers into the EUDR compliance process. But many of these producers are now at risk of losing access to the European market. Why? Because the systems and infrastructure to support them aren’t yet in place, the delay in regulation has further stalled local momentum. When deadlines shift, so does the urgency, and people stop prioritising compliance.”
“A similar picture is unfolding in Ethiopia, where more than 5 million coffee farmers are waiting for clarity. They’re waiting, sceptical that enforcement will ever come and unsure whether to invest time and resources into a system that keeps moving the goalposts,” he said.
“Let’s be clear. These delays are not happening because the tools don’t exist. We have the technology. We have traceability platforms, AI, satellite mapping, and scalable software that can support millions of smallholders. The real issue is political will, or lack of it. The EUDR is being watered down behind closed doors by lobbyists and legacy players who want to protect profits, not forests. That’s not regulation. That’s regulatory theatre. And in countries like Ethiopia and Indonesia, where farmers are already on the edge, it’s undermining years of progress and trust. Another delay would be toothless. We don’t need more consultations. We need action.”
“The EUDR is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform agricultural trade, but only if it’s treated with the urgency and seriousness it demands. If we keep moving the goalposts, we risk turning this regulation into just another policy farmers can’t trust,” Trask said. What’s needed now is leadership. Clear rules. Real consequences. And a commitment to support the people at the beginning of the supply chain, not just the ones at the end.”
WWF slams the European Parliament over EUDR circus
Trask’s comments come after a number of the world’s largest ENGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), slammed the European Parliment for last month voting against the country risk system, which it said “represents an irresponsible move against one of the EU’s flagship environmental laws,” with the inclusion of a “insignificant or negligible risk (category) – absent from the legal text of the EUDR…causing more burden for companies that have already set up systems, and undermine the legal certainty that businesses urgently need.”
According to Anke Schulmeister-Oldenhove, Manager of Forests at WWF European Policy Office, the “Parliament seems to be blind to the ongoing climate crisis, putting the EUDR’s credibility and the EU’s climate leadership at risk, and sending the wrong signal at the worst possible time as global deforestation rates spiral out of control. The European Commission must now stay the course and implement the EUDR, not be distracted by this political posturing.”
- To learn more about the country benchmarking system, click here to read Wood Central’s exclusive interview with Marigold Walkins and Kerstin Canby from Forest Trends last month.
