Innovative Farmers Privacy Notice
How we handle your data
Contents
- Who we are
- What information we collect
- Registering on the website/for newsletters
- Registering for a meeting or event (via Eventbrite)
- Becoming a field lab member
- Sensitive personal information
- How we collect the data and why we collect it
- Obtaining information
- Removing consent
- How long will we keep your personal information for
- Legitimate interest to contact you
- What we do with the information
- Main activities
- Data sharing
- How we store your information
- Your data protection rights
- How to complain
1. Who we are
Innovative Farmers is a programme led and managed by the Soil Association (acting as the data controller). Also known as the Duchy Future Farming Programme created in 2012, Innovative Farmers as a brand, with a subscriber network and website, was launched in 2015.
Soil Association is a registered charity and this privacy policy is in addition to the Soil Association group’s privacy policy, which can be read in full here (www.soilassociation.org/privacy-policy/).
2. What information we collect
a. Registering on the website and/or sign up for newsletters
When you join/register on our website (www.innovativefarmers.org/join) or sign up to the newsletter, we may process and store the following information:
Your name, email address, professional title (e.g. farmer, researcher, veterinarian, etc.) and region (required)
b. Registering for a meeting or event (via Eventbrite)
When you register for an event or field lab meeting using meeting service Eventbrite, we process and store the following information:
- Your name, email address, occupation and postcode (required)
- Your phone number (optional)
- Dietary and access requirements (required for in-person events)
- Option to join the Innovative Farmers newsletter
We also collect feedback after the event, which is anonymised as default unless you provide personal information that may identify you in the feedback form or survey or request further follow-up contact.
Information for the event/meeting is processed only for the purposes of the event described on registration, and all copies of data are deleted within 6 months of the event being held unless you also sign up to our newsletter, in which case the information provided is stored on our database as a new subscriber, as set out above and excluding any personal information regarding diet and access requirements unless specific additional permission is granted by you for us to store these data for future reference.
c. Becoming a field lab member
When you become a member of a Field Lab group, we store and process the following information on you:
- If you are a farmer:
- Your name, email address, your profession, details on whether you are a trial host, telephone number, farm/business name, address and postcode, farming sector, farm size and type of farming system(required)
- Your X handle (previously known as Twitter), your website and whether you are a Waitrose supplier (optional)
- Information submitted by you or your coordinator on how your field lab trial is progressing, including trial data and results (required)
- If you are not a farmer:
- Your name, email address, telephone number, your profession, business/organisation name and the industry you represent (required)
- Your Twitter handle and website (optional)
- Both farmers and individuals of other occupations:
- Business invoicing details if you are to be a recipient of a field lab research grant (where applicable)
- Your feedback and experiences of being part of the field lab
d. Sensitive personal information
We do not request or store any sensitive personal information such as religious beliefs, ethnicity, political preferences, marital status (unless a partner is also involved in the programme and it makes sense to reference this in the database), trade union identifies, any health, biometrics, or sexual orientation data.
3. How we collect the data and why we collect it
a. Obtaining information
Most of the personal information we process and store is provided to us directly by you (or via your coordinator or researcher if you are part of a field lab group, with your express permission) for one of the following reasons:
- For monitoring and evaluation of your experiences, so we can continually improve the service and understand our impact.
- For staff in the programme team to contact you (as members of field lab groups), for the purposes of discussing field lab progress or to create informative external communications about the research happening in the network, including the publishing of trial data and results via a final field lab report.
- To send regular news, updates on events and opportunities in the network to people who have opted into email communications. This may include opportunities and events that we consider local to you, based on the region you selected during newsletter signup.
- To share the progress, results and impact of field labs with current and potential funders, including for potential case studies.
- We may share some of your personal information (such as your name, the name of your farm, location and individual results where these have been made public through the final field lab report) as part of case studies in connection with the Field Lab in which you took part, unless you specifically asked us to anonymise your data.
- If you are taking part in trials as a field lab member, we create a profile of you on the relevant field lab page ‘Meet the team’ section on the Innovative Farmers website. This shows your name, farm name and county. You are permitted to request that your data be anonymised and that your profile does not show up on the website or in communications material, however you are asked to request this as soon as possible during the initial development of the field lab and confirm this when signing the Field Lab Agreement.
b. Removing consent
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information is your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time, though this may mean that you will cease being part of the Innovative Farmers programme.
You can consent to Innovative Farmers using your information (i.e. for tracking field lab progress) whilst at the same time removing your consent to receive newsletters and bulk mailings. You can do this by unsubscribing to our newsletter by using the link at the bottom of each email, or by contacting us directly at info@innovativefarmers.org, telephone 0117 314 5109.
c. How long will we keep your personal information for
We will only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for as explained below in ‘what we do with the information we have'.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the purposes for which we process your personal information, whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
d. Legitimate interest to email you
There are occasions when we will contact you even if you have not actively opted into email communications. This will only occur where we would consider there is a legitimate interest for us to maintain contact with you without needing consent, as detailed below.
We would consider you legitimate interest where:
- You are part of an active or past field lab, or expressed clear recent interest in a developing field lab group.
- You are a partner to the programme or involved in any of our governance groups.
4. What we do with the information
a. Main activities
- Part of your membership services include a monthly newsletter about the programme which you will have had the choice to opt into when you registered with us. You can opt out of these at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button at the bottom of all mailings, or by contacting us.
- Communication of events and opportunities local to you, based on the region you selected when you signed up to the newsletter.
- Members of field lab groups are collaborating and therefore the coordinator may ask if you would like to share your personal contact details with other members of the group for either email, mobile or WhatsApp (and other social networking) use to communicate whilst the trial progresses. Your information will be shared only with your explicit permission.
b. Data sharing
Data may be shared with our partners in the following circumstances:
- Innovative Farmers will share your contact details with the designated field lab coordinator(s) and researcher(s) as this is necessary for the purpose of group administration, support and the effective running of the on-farm trials. They may use your data in the following way:
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- Your personal contact data will be used for the purposes of administering and supporting the Field Lab group.
Limited personal data (e.g. farm name and location but not contact details) may be used by the Field Lab Coordinators or Researchers in presentations and dissemination of the Results of the Field Labs, unless you have requested your data be anonymised.
- Limited personal data (e.g. farm name and location but not contact details) may be used by the Field Lab Coordinators or Researchers in marketing information referencing their work and the Results of the Field Labs, unless you have requested your data be anonymised.
- The field lab coordinator(s) and researcher(s) must delete all personal data on the field lab group members when they are no longer involved in the field lab.
- The Innovative Farmers programme will share your contact details with our independent evaluation partners, for the sole purpose of external evaluation of Innovative Farmers. Contact information used in evaluation is coded and anonymised during analyses and removed from their system at a maximum 6 months after the evaluation is complete and the final report accepted.
- Your personal data will not be shared with any other person or organisation unless required by law.
5. How we store your information
Your information is securely stored on two password protected systems, our CRM database, held on servers in Bristol, UK and on Mailchimp, our 3rd party email marketing platform.
We will only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements as part of the Innovative Farmers programme.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In many cases, we will keep your personal information for up to seven years after the programme has ceased.
6. Your data protection rights
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
- Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
- Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
- Your right to erasure - If you wish to end your participation with Innovative Farmers, you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information, as we will not need it any longer. Contact us via the details below to request this. We may need to keep a minimal record on our system to document that you participated, withdrew consent and requested erasure, and that we complied, but this will be discussed with you when you contact us.
- Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
- Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to us processing your data at any time. Depending on what you want us to stop, this may end your participation with Innovative Farmers.
- Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
Please contact us at info@innovativefarmers.org or telephone 0117 314 5109 if you wish to make a request.
7. How to complain
If you have any questions or complaints about the use of your data, please contact Innovation Farmers at info@innovativefarmers.org or telephone 0117 314 5109. Alternatively, you can write to us at:
Innovative Farmers
Spear House
51 Victoria Road
Bristol
BS1 6AD
If you are not satisfied with how we handle your complaint, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF