• Agribusiness practices that integrate mixed farming with tree growing offer a sustainable approach to restoration. This method enhances plant, crop, and soil health by leveraging the natural benefits that different species provide to each other. In turn, crops can support tree health by preventing soil erosion and enhancing soil structure. This complementary relationship promotes a more resilient and productive agricultural system, fostering long-term ecological balance and sustainability.
• Farmers practicing mixed agriculture within an agribusiness framework benefit from diversified sources of income and food. This approach mitigates the risks associated with climate change, such as prolonged droughts or floods, by not relying on a single crop or enterprise. Diversified farming systems ensure that if one crop fails due to adverse weather conditions, other crops or agricultural activities can provide income and sustenance. This reduces vulnerability and enhances food security, allowing farmers to sustain their livelihoods despite environmental challenges.
• For long-term sustainability, farmers must align their expenditures with various income sources. It is crucial to have a daily income source to cover ongoing expenses and manage financial risks effectively. Diversified income streams from mixed farming, including crops, livestock, and tree products, provide a steady cash flow that can support daily needs and unexpected expenses. This financial resilience enables farmers to invest in their land and resources continuously, promoting sustainable agricultural practices and improving overall economic stability.

• The community needed extensive sensitization and education to understand the importance of restoration.
• We established a tree nursery to supply seedlings to farmers locally, reducing the costs associated with sourcing seedlings from distant locations.
• Initially, we planted exotic species like pine and eucalyptus, but have now shifted our focus to promoting indigenous trees and avoiding monoculture.
• When we integrated crops that provided short-term income and demonstrated cash flow for farmers, our pitch decks attracted significantly more attention, as evidenced by projects like the NSSF Hi Innovator Project and Land Accelerator.

• Prior identification of market-demand crops before mobilizing farmers to grow them enhances the likelihood of strong demand for the produce.
• Growing trees alongside crops improves their growth rate compared to monoculture, resulting in higher yields and a greater variety of products from the same land.
• Incentivizing farmers to maintain and manage their trees ensures that they do not rely solely on tree income, as they now have alternative sources of revenue.
• Our restoration efforts have led to a greener environment and improved air quality.

• Each stakeholder has different needs and the Dashboard can be tailored to each
• We started with too few features and learned that each stakeholder has specific requests that we have been adding (like biodiversity and socioeconomic data reporting)
• Project implementers also need farmer stories for their marketing materials which we can also provide via the impact dashboard
• We started with the Dashboard only available to the developers themselves, but as they want portions of it to be easy to integrate in their own websites or shared with their stakeholders we’ve implemented this as well

• Every project is different and so are the needs of the project implementers. Therefore, we are providing different packages for our SaaS customers to fulfill their specific needs.
   
• Researching the allometric formulas for native tree species in various regions is a complex and challenging task. This complexity underscores the need for integrating more in-depth species research into the app. Allometric formulas are crucial because they allow for precise estimations of tree biomass, carbon storage, and growth rates, which can differ widely among species and geographical areas. By enhancing the app with more detailed species-specific data, TREEO can provide more accurate insights into tree growth and its environmental impacts. This integration will significantly improve the app's utility and trustworthiness for project implementers and users, ensuring that TREEO's technology remains at the forefront of environmental monitoring and management.
   
• Providing the technology in different languages 
   
• UX: more intuitive and easy-to-use operation, so that illiterates can also navigate easily through the app with training videos or pictures to demonstrate the processes 
   
• We identified the need for training manuals for every single activity on the App and Cloud

• Offering TREEO App as a SaaS product has helped us gather user feedback which has enabled us to identify areas of improvement. Therefore, with every update we consider the user feedback to make the app more user-friendly.
   
• We maintain clear and transparent communication with our different customers about updates, new features, and best practices. This allows them to be fully equipped on how to use the TREEO app leading to better utilization of our product offering.
   
• Our capacity building fosters environmental stewardship and motivate local people to actively participate in climate action - a “co-benefit” of such projects
   
• Setting up the Customer Success team to conduct both remote and on-site training on-demand.
   
• To ensure complete understanding, our training team uses the local languages of the area in their sessions with farmers.

When originating the idea of offering our technology as a SaaS solution, we thought it would only help companies/NGOs that are operating in the Voluntary Carbon Market, because of the precise carbon calculation we offer. But within a short time, we realized that our product adds value for more target groups, even if they are not operating in the VCM and just want to track the number of trees they have planted, how many survive, and other monitoring needs. 

While enhancing our single-tree monitoring activities and technology, we had a few challenges to master, for example so the wifi connection can be off in the planting regions. That’s why our technology can be used as a 100% offline-first tool for monitoring the trees. 

Weather patterns have a strong impact on tree monitoring, since most of the projects are affected by rainy seasons. This needs to be considered and can impact the speed of delivery and progress per day. 

We needed a data validation add-on, due to the misuse (e.g. photographing other objects) of the App. Therefore, we have implemented automatic tracking, which later our forestry team manually double-checks the anomalies detected by the automatic one.

• Go/No-Go Zones: we encountered land included in the project that were not suitable for planting, hence it was important to have the go-zone feature implementation 
   
• Technology: simplify the UX design to facilitate the tech optics in rural populations 
   
• Land survey: provide trainings for farmers to improve the land survey measurement quality