Ten dairy cows have just secured a $20,000 loan for small Brazilian farmers. Their tokens are registered on B3, the São Paulo Stock Exchange. A first on a national stock exchange.

The deal is driven by Cowmed, a Brazilian agritech company. The goal is to bypass the lending limits imposed by local banks, amid credit restrictions for agrobusiness.

Each cow wears a connected “Smarty Collar” that monitors health, behavior, and location via artificial intelligence. This data creates a secured digital identity, linked to the token and the contract registered on B3.

Traceability makes traditional fraud impossible—such as using the same cow as collateral for multiple loans. If the animal dies, it can be replaced by another live animal without breaking the contract.

Cowmed already tracks 100,000 cows across 1,000 farms, for $395 million in herd value. The company projects that 20% of its network will adopt the model, which would unlock $77.6 million in agricultural credit.

The issue goes beyond Brazil. The global gap between small businesses’ financing needs and the credit actually obtained reaches $5.7 trillion, including $331 billion just in sub-Saharan Africa, where only 6% of small farmers access credit. Enough to reflect on what tokenization can really change on the ground.