Cows, Collars & Code: Brazil's First B3-Listed Bovine Collateral Is udderly on-chain 🐄

Ten dairy cows on a farm in Paraná, Brazil, became the first livestock formally registered as collateral on B3, the country's main stock exchange, under a blockchain-based tokenization pilot developed by agricultural tech startup Cowmed and partners BMP and Target FIDC. Fazenda Engenho Velho, located in Imbituva, pledged ten cows valued at R$120,000 (around $23,310) to secure a CPR-F—a Cédula de Produto Rural Financeira, Brazil's rural credit certificate—worth R$100,000 (around $19,420) from BMP, a central bank-authorized direct credit company.

Each animal was fitted with a Cowmed smart collar that captures health, behavioral, and location data through AI; those data points are cryptographically hashed into a tamper-resistant digital identifier bound to the credit contract. BMP then sold the credit rights to Target FIDC, a fund that purchases and monetizes receivables, which registered the full transaction on B3. No physical farm inspection was required to link the cows to the loan.

The structure targets a longstanding discount applied to livestock-backed credit. Humberto Brenner, director at Target FIDC, told Globo Rural that banks routinely value cattle at as much as 60% below market for collateral purposes—a cow worth R$20,000 ($2,380) on paper can be assessed at roughly R$8,000 ($1,600) for lending because lenders cannot reliably confirm an animal's condition or location. "With monitoring, that uncertainty is eliminated," Brenner said, adding that "banks will increasingly demand real collateral and new information."

The economic backdrop has made alternative collateral scarce. Agribusiness bankruptcy protection requests—recuperação judicial, Brazil's equivalent of Chapter 11—reached 1,990 in 2025, nearly four times the 534 filed in 2023, according to Serasa Experian, driven by high interest rates, falling commodity prices, and climate-related shocks. Cowmed CEO Thiago Martins framed the operation as a response to that credit squeeze: "We took the cow, a real and tangible asset, and transformed it into a digital asset backed by a unique code monitored in real time," he told CNN Brasil. "This digitalization allows formal registration on B3 as a financial security—the process gives the farmer an advantageous opportunity to get financing, opening a new collateral alternative at a time of strong credit restrictions in agribusiness." Martins added that the model "allows the farmer to access more attractive credit in terms of cost and limit. We want to connect the farmer and the financial institution with a new alternative."

The deal extends the broader real-world asset tokenization trend—converting physical items into digital instruments usable in financial markets—into agricultural lending. Cowmed, BMP, and Target FIDC have signaled plans to scale the structure to additional producers as B3-listed collateral expands beyond the inaugural ten-cow parcel from Paraná.