Pandawa Agri is an Indonesian life sciences company with a mission is to create safer, more environmentally friendly agricultural inputs that lower chemical exposure for workers, cut carbon emissions, and improve sustainability.
One of its innovations is a pesticide reductant, described as a carrier agent designed to make pesticides work more efficiently while being more environmentally friendly.
The reductant allows farmers and plantations to cut pesticide use by up to 50% while still achieving the same weed‑ or pest‑control efficacy.
It has a carbon footprint that is 14 times lower than glyphosate and can help plantations reduce almost 4,000 tonnes of CO₂‑equivalent annually.
In 2024, venture builder Terratai announced an investment in Pandawa Agri to support the scale-up of its production capacity.
Ecosystem model
Speaking to AgTechNavigator, CEO Kukuh Roxa said coffee is currently the biggest strategic opportunity for the firm.
“Indonesia is one of the biggest coffee producers but a lot of the coffee we export has trouble meeting the maximum residue levels for herbicides, especially glyphosate. Indonesia has not banned glyphosate, but European markets do not want products that contain any detectable residue. As a result, many of our coffee exports are being rejected or put under analysis, and big traders are facing a lot of headaches because of this.”
However, he underscored that simply selling its reductant to farmers was not viable, hence the company built an end‑to‑end agricultural model to support smallholder farmers.
This ecosystem is designed to overcome the practical and commercial barriers that prevent smallholders from adopting new technologies, especially when it comes to pesticide reduction.
Rather than simply selling products, the company integrates agronomy support, technology packages, and market access into a unified system that delivers productivity improvements while lowering chemical usage.
The ecosystem integrates three components: upstream agronomy support, input packages built around reductant technology, and downstream market linkages that guarantee farmers access to buyers.
The buyers that Pandawa Agri collaborates with are typically multinational food and beverage companies that prioritise low‑carbon or regenerative agriculture sourcing.
This guaranteed access gives farmers an additional incentive to remain in the ecosystem, since buyers increasingly require proof of pesticide‑residue compliance, traceability and emissions reductions.
Biggest opportunities in coffee
Pandawa Agri is positioning coffee as one of its two flagship smallholder ecosystems, alongside rice.
The company sees coffee as a major opportunity because global buyers, especially in Europe, are demanding regeneratively grown, low‑carbon coffee with lower chemical residues.
Indonesia is among the world’s largest coffee producers, yet exporters increasingly struggle with shipments being rejected due to glyphosate residues. Pandawa Agri believes its reductant technology can directly address this bottleneck and help Indonesia meet stricter standards.
“In Europe right now, consumers want coffee that comes from regenerative agriculture. Because of that, the big multinational players in the coffee industry want to create low‑carbon coffee produced through regenerative practices. They do not have the expertise to implement these methods in the field, which is why they are asking our company to partner with them.
The company’s coffee ecosystem is being built in Lampung, where it has already completed a 20‑hectare pilot plot. This will expand to nearly 200 hectares in 2026.
It also aims to create the first standard operating procedures (SOP) for low‑carbon coffee in Asia.
“We are focusing on how to reduce chemical use in coffee production, and together we are working to create a new SOP for low‑carbon coffee based on regenerative agriculture. When we calculated the impact, the emissions we can reduce are more than 50 per cent,” said Roxa.
At the same time, the company is preparing scale up its regenerative agriculture coffee ecosystem in Lampung.
“In the middle of 2026, we will be preparing a really huge ecosystem together with the big multinationals corporation to implement regenerative agriculture, to reduce and to create a low carbon coffee in at least 10,000 hectares in Lampung. It’s really huge. So that’s why we are preparing ourselves as much to be able to serve that kind of ecosystem.”
It supports plantation clients as well as smallholder ecosystems in rice and coffee, and works with multinational buyers seeking low‑carbon, regenerative agricultural supply chains.
