Brazilian farm turns 10 cows into blockchain collateral for $19,600 loan

A dairy farm in Paraná, Brazil just did something no farm has done before: it turned its cows into tradeable collateral on a stock exchange.

Fazenda Engenho Velho, located in Imbituva, secured a 100,000-real loan (roughly $19,600) by pledging 10 dairy cows worth about 120,000 reais ($23,500) as collateral. Brazilian investment fund Target FIDC structured the deal and registered it on B3, the country’s primary exchange, the first transaction of its kind on the platform, according to Target FIDC.

How the cows became collateral

Each animal was fitted with an AI-powered smart collar built by agtech startup Cowmed, tracking health, behavior, and location in real time. That data was cryptographically hashed into a unique digital identity for each cow, tied directly to the loan contract, letting lenders verify the collateral remotely instead of sending an inspector to the farm.

The loan itself came through a CPR-F (Cédula de Produto Rural Financeira), a Brazilian rural credit note that lets farmers borrow against livestock or crops. Central bank-authorized lender BMP issued the note before selling the credit rights to Target FIDC, which handled the collateral registration with B3.

Why lenders are willing to bet on livestock

Banks have traditionally discounted livestock collateral by as much as 60%, unable to confirm in real time whether an animal is healthy, underweight, or already gone. Continuous monitoring removes that blind spot.

“With monitoring, that uncertainty is eliminated,” Target FIDC director Humberto Brenner told Globo Rural.

Cowmed CEO Thiago Martins described the shift to CNN Brazil as converting a physical asset into a verifiable digital one, formally recognized by B3 as movable collateral.

A credit lifeline for an industry under strain

The timing matters. Brazilian agribusiness bankruptcy filings hit nearly 2,000 in 2025, almost four times 2023’s total, per Serasa Experian, as high interest rates and volatile commodity prices squeeze farmers’ access to conventional credit.

Cowmed currently monitors around 100,000 cattle across roughly 1,200 farms in six countries, representing an estimated 2 billion reais in herd value. The company projects that up to 20% of its monitored herd could eventually be used as loan collateral, unlocking as much as 400 million reais in financing through B3 over the next two years.