A financial initiative developed by the Grenada-based Climate-Smart Agriculture Compliant (C-SAC) has been officially selected as one of the top 13 global finalists for the 2026 Global AgriInno Challenge (GAC).
In Hangzhou, China, the C-SAC will compete for up to US$$30,000 in seed funding and the prestigious opportunity to showcase its blockchain-powered solution at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Science and Innovation Forum in Rome this October.
Science Advisor to the North East Farmers Organisation (NEFO), Steve Maximay, has described the selection of C-SAC’s groundbreaking AgTech solution, the Climate-Smart Agriculture Compliant (CSAC) tool and protocol as a major victory for Caribbean agricultural innovation.
Developed by Maximay, C-SAC represents a paradigm shift in how smallholder farmers are compensated for ecological stewardship, noting that historically, traditional commodity markets have compensated farmers strictly for crop yields, offering zero financial rewards for the vital, heavy-lifting ecological work demanded by international climate treaties.
‘The best way to encourage adaptation and have people adopt it is by attachings a financial incentive at the end,’ said Maximay.
‘We have found a proven mechanism to reward farmers… which is going to come from the climate justice and just transition funds that we have been able to negotiate. This is a shift from climate vulnerability to real, sustainable abundance,’ he added.
Stopping greenwashing and triggering the ‘Climate Premium’ previously adopted by St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the Partnership Initiative for Sustainable Land Management (PISLM) as their de facto climate-smart mechanism, C-SAC operates as a strict auditing protocol.
The tool evaluates farms across five operational arms, namely resource conservation, energy use, safety, biodiversity support, and greenhouse gas reduction. To achieve C-SAC certification, a farm’s output must meet an absolute baseline score of 40 out of 100 points, effectively filtering out greenwashing
Maxmay said that C-SAC’s true breakthrough lies in its digital architecture. He said utilising a secure, blockchain-based distributed ledger and smart contracts, the system facilitates an automated, mathematically guaranteed ‘Climate Premium’.
‘At the exact moment of harvest, farmers receive the base commodity price from buyers, simultaneously paired with a 10 to 20 per cent Climate Premium top-up wired directly to their wallets.
‘Crucially, this premium is not funded by local consumers, but is instead funneled directly from global just transition and climate justice reserves to the grassroots level.’
Maximay said that representing the Caribbean on the Global Stage, the C-SAC Caribbean Programme, spearheaded by NEFO, aims to scale this mechanism to approximately 3,000 smallholder farmers across Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and St. Kitts and Nevis.