In 2006, Lucas Simons (the founder of SCOPEinsight) traveled to Guatemala as the director of a large organization focusing on the certification and standard-setting of farmers. The focus of this trip was to celebrate the certification of coffee farmers. After the celebration party, Lucas was walking with the management from the farmer organization back to the compound. In passing, the farmer mentioned how happy he was that he was certified, but that he still couldn’t get the loan he needed to grow his business. Struck by this comment, Lucas’ celebratory mood quickly changed while he pondered over a way to change this reality. He thought to himself, “If certification doesn’t help better farming organizations get access to markets, then what is wrong with the system?” Lucas spent months talking about this with industry insiders, and answers weren’t coming fast enough.
After watching the financial news, the idea struck him: “What about a rating system to demonstrate the professional reliability of farming organizations?” Lucas then poured his energy into testing the viability of this idea and founded SCOPEinsight. Together with lenders, data analysts, interns, and anyone else who wanted to pitch in, he developed the SCOPE methodology. But the journey was far from over as a company based on providing business intelligence needed to collect enough data to inform market players of the creditworthiness of farming organizations.
Today, SCOPEinsight has conducted thousands of assessments with frontrunners like the IFC, Cargill, ICCO, and over 60 development partners. With over a million data points, the data SCOPEinsight provides increases transparency in the agricultural sector, lowers investment risks, and increases business opportunities for stakeholders in and around the agricultural value chain.
Vision, Mission & Approach
Our Vision, Mission, and Approach creates value for the entire agricultural value chain.
Vision
Our vision is to create more opportunities for professional agribusinesses in emerging markets.
Mission
Our mission is to transform agricultural sectors by systematically increasing the market inclusiveness of professional agribusinesses.
Approach
We approach farming as a business and provide the business intelligence needed to advance farmer professionalism.
Interested to read more?
Read about how professionalizing farmer organizations is transformational.
