The story of how a cacao company's GIS team built an open drone program for the farmers they work with.
Kennemer Foods International is a Philippine agribusiness supporting smallholder farmers across cacao, coffee and coconut value chains — from planting materials and training, through to market access.
Lumipad started inside Kennemer's GIS and remote-sensing team. The brief was simple: surveys are bottlenecked by expensive drones and scarce pilots. So instead of buying more, build cheaper — and put them in the hands of the people who already work the land.
The program now feeds directly into Kennemer's cacao-preneur initiative and supports compliance with new EU deforestation regulations (EUDR). Every drone in the field is one more data point keeping a farmer connected to global markets.
Today, Lumipad trains cohorts in Davao and ships drone kits to remote participants around the world. All documentation — from wiring diagrams to business templates — is published under Creative Commons, free for anyone to adapt.
Kennemer Foods International
Parent organisation · Davao, Philippines