Questions and answers
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no payment. FAO's Whisp service is free and our hosting cost is small. To keep it fair for everyone there are limits: up to 2000 plots per check, 10 checks and 5000 plots per day from one connection.
Is the result a certificate or proof of compliance?
No. It is a risk screen to support due diligence. The maps can be wrong, and the company placing the product on the EU market stays responsible for its due diligence statement.
Why did my shade-grown coffee come out amber?
Coffee grown under tall shade trees looks like forest to satellites, and crop maps often miss it. Amber means the maps cannot decide. Collect the evidence on the plot's checklist: board registration, land records showing farm use before 2021, dated photos or imagery.
How do I get coordinates for a plot?
Stand in the plot and read the location from a phone GPS app, or long-press the spot in Google Maps and copy the numbers. Keep at least six decimal places (for example 12.470315, 75.870122). For plots over 4 hectares, walk the boundary with a GPS app that saves a track, and export it as GeoJSON.
What file formats work?
CSV (comma, semicolon or tab separated) with columns for plot ID, latitude and longitude, and optionally area in hectares and crop. Or GeoJSON with points, polygons or multipolygons. KML files can be converted to GeoJSON with free tools such as geojson.io. Download the sample CSV from the check page.
Which crops are covered?
Coffee, cocoa, rubber and oil palm (perennial crops), soya (annual crops) and wood. Cattle is not covered because Whisp has no cattle model yet.
Who sees my plots?
Anyone with your private result link, so share it with care. The plot shapes (without names) are sent to FAO's Whisp service for the check; FAO does not keep them. The site operator can see the stored lists. See Privacy.
How long are results kept?
30 days, then they are deleted automatically. You can delete a check at any time from its result page.
I lost my result link.
We cannot look it up for you, because there are no accounts. Run the check again with the same file.
Where do the maps come from?
Whisp combines more than 20 public datasets, including the EU forest map of 2020 (JRC), tropical moist forest maps, Global Forest Change, GLAD and RADD alerts and commodity maps from the Forest Data Partnership. Each plot page lists every value Whisp returned.