Orbae launches with 3Keel as partner and early adopter
News story
13 March 2025
Platform provides high-accuracy land use change emission factors for agricultural commodities worldwide, available as open data.
3Keel is partnering with AdAstra Sustainability to improve the accuracy of land-use change emissions reporting. We are an early adopter and supporter of Orbae, a free web platform that provides open data on the land-use conversion impacts of 11 major agricultural commodities.
Spread across more than 30 countries and their subnational jurisdictions, the commodities include palm, soy, sugarcane and corn. Users can access land-use change emission factors for each dataset and view heatmaps of a commodity’s carbon intensity.
Orbae is the first technology to automatically calculate environmental metrics on land conversion for commodities worldwide in 30-metre resolution, enabling more targeted interventions to end deforestation.
Deforestation and land conversion: A major challenge for the agrifood sector
Land conversion (or land use change) refers to any way in which humans alter natural ecosystems, such as clearing forests or draining wetlands to grow crops. It accounts for an estimated 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, over 75% of which is driven by agriculture.
Science identifies stopping deforestation by 2030 as critical for addressing climate change and biodiversity loss. However, agri-food companies have faced significant challenges in pinpointing where their interventions can be of greatest value. In particular, complex supply chains and a lack of reliable traceability data have hindered landscape-level interventions where diverse stakeholders can collaborate on coordinated action.
How does Orbae help?
Built on an algorithm from AdAstra that processes billions of satellite-based data points in 30-metre 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.
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). 3Keel is already using the platform for client work.
3Keel Founding Director, Richard Sheane, explains why we are early adopters of the tech, saying: “We’ve been impressed by the team’s approach to tackling this challenge. It’s the first time that land conversion impacts have been quantified at such a global scale and such a granular resolution. We applaud the fact that they’re making their data open source, as this will drive greater impact.”
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.
Visit Orbae to find out more.
