Veriveld Macadamia transparency

Independent · South African · in development

You should know what you delivered.

Every season, growers send nuts away and wait for a report they cannot check. Processors grade honestly and still get doubted. Both problems have the same cause: nobody has independent data. We're building it.

A third of what leaves your farm is what you actually get paid for. Everything hinges on how accurately that third is measured — and today, only one party in the transaction does the measuring.

The problem, plainly

This isn't about dishonesty. It's about information. When only one side can measure, even accurate reports get doubted, and honest processors carry suspicion they haven't earned.

You can't check the report

Moisture, kernel recovery, unsound percentages, breakage — all measured after your nuts have left, with no independent record of what you sent.

You can't compare

Is your recovery good or poor? Is your deduction normal for your cultivar and district? Nobody can tell you, because nobody collects it.

You can't improve what you can't see

Much of the value lost between tree and payment happens on the farm — in harvest timing, drying and storage. Without feedback, it repeats every season.

Processors carry it too

Careful graders spend their season defending correct numbers, fielding phone calls and rebuilding trust they never lost.

Two sides. One missing thing.

We are not building a tool for growers to fight processors. Nothing useful comes from that. We're building the shared record both sides have been missing.

For the grower

  • An independent record of every consignment before it leaves your farm
  • Your results compared with growers of the same cultivar in the same district
  • Practical feedback on harvest timing, drying and storage — the things that lift recovery
  • A season history you own, and can take to any processor, buyer or bank

For the processor

  • Proof your grading is consistent — an advantage when recruiting growers
  • Fewer disputes, and far fewer phone calls asking the same four questions
  • Digital intake and reporting instead of clipboards and spreadsheets
  • Anonymous benchmarks: how your throughput, breakage and recovery compare

And for both: better nuts arriving at the factory. When growers get feedback, incoming quality rises — which means higher recovery, less breakage, and more kernel value to share. A grower who knows why last season's batch scored poorly delivers a better one next year. That is the only version of this that works for everybody.

What we intend to build

One platform, built in stages — starting with the piece the industry tells us matters most.

Independent load record

Sample your consignment before the truck leaves. Moisture, weight, photographs, timestamp and location captured into a signed record only you control.

Grower

Pre-delivery quality estimate

Crack a small sample and photograph it. Get an estimate of kernel recovery, breakage and defects before you send — so the report that comes back holds no surprises.

Grower

Report comparison

When the processor's report arrives, it's compared against your own estimate. Differences within normal tolerance are shown as normal. Anything unusual is flagged — with the statistics behind it.

Both

District benchmarks

See how your recovery, moisture and deductions compare with similar farms nearby. Anonymous both ways — you're never named, and neither is anyone else.

Grower

Quality coaching

Your own history turned into guidance: when to harvest, how long to dry, how to store. Small changes here move kernel recovery more than any dispute ever will.

Grower

Live grower portal

Your loads, from arrival to grading to payment, visible as they happen. No more phoning to ask whether the truck arrived or what the moisture came back at.

Both

Digital intake

QR-coded loads, photographs, weight and moisture captured at the weighbridge. One record, one truth, from the gate onwards.

Both

AI grading assistant

A camera flags mould, insect damage, staining, immature and broken kernels; the grader decides. Faster, more consistent, and easier to train new staff on.

Both

Recovery prediction

Estimate whole-kernel yield before cracking, so machine settings can be matched to the batch. Less breakage means more value for the grower and the processor alike.

Both

Traceability buyers trust

Farm, cultivar, harvest date, drying, processing and packing in one verified chain — the kind of provenance international buyers increasingly pay a premium for.

Both

Where we actually are: at the beginning, and honest about it. None of the above is built yet. We're doing the research first, because the fastest way to waste two years is to build something the industry didn't ask for. What gets built first will be decided by the growers and processors who answer these questions.

Have your say

The whole thing rests on this. Tell us what your season actually looks like, and everyone who takes part receives the full results — the first time these numbers will have been put side by side.

Growers · 4 minutes

What did deductions cost you?

Grading, deductions, drying, disputes — and what would genuinely help. Anonymous unless you choose otherwise.

Start the grower survey

Processors · 10 minutes

Help define the standard

Throughput, breakage, labour, grower relationships. Founding partners shape what gets built and receive the industry benchmark.

Processor discovery

Support the research

Veriveld is self-funded and independent — no processor, buyer or equipment supplier pays for any part of it, and that independence is the whole point. It does cost money to run.

  • Travel to farms and factories across the country
  • Laboratory testing to calibrate quality measurements
  • Sampling equipment for the on-farm pilot
  • Publishing the findings free to the whole industry
Contribute to the research

Every finding is published free to growers and processors regardless of whether they contributed a cent.

Who is behind this

Stephan Potgieter

Founder · independent researcher

stephanpotgieter.co.za

I'm not from a processing company and I'm not selling equipment. I started looking at this because the gap between what a grower is paid and what a consumer pays seemed worth understanding — and the deeper I looked, the clearer it became that the real problem isn't greed on anyone's part. It's that the information simply doesn't exist.

So I'm gathering it. Openly, from both sides, and publishing what I find. If it turns into a business, good. If it turns out the industry's real problem is something else entirely, I'd rather learn that from you now than discover it after building the wrong thing.