Privacy policy
Version 2 · in force from 31 August 2026 · section 7 added 15 October 2026 · replaces version 1 of 12 August 2026
The short version
FieldFriend is run by Field Friend Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (number 17120050). We are the data controller for the information described here.
- If you are a farmer, we hold your name, phone number, where your farm is, and what you tell us about how you farm. We use it to build your season plan and to answer your questions.
- We do not use your information for advertising.
- Some of your questions are answered using an artificial intelligence system. It gives advice, not instructions, and it can be wrong.
- Your local agent, the FieldFriend team, and the cooperative, buyer or project you are registered with can see your record. Nobody else can.
- If you sign up through the pilot form on our front page, Google stores your answers for us, outside Nigeria. With your agreement, we use them to choose who to invite to the pilot and to contact you about it. Only if you tick a second box do we also use them to improve FieldFriend and share summaries or quotes without your name. We keep them for 2 years at most (section 7).
- You can ask to see, correct or delete what we hold at any time. Write to james@fieldfriend.africa or tell your local agent.
The rest of this page is the full detail, which UK data protection law requires us to give you, and Nigerian data protection law too if you are in Nigeria.
- 1. Who we are and how to contact us
- 2. If you only visit this website
- 3. If you are a farmer using FieldFriend
- 4. If you are a field agent
- 5. If you work for a partner organisation
- 6. If you write to us
- 7. If you sign up through our pilot form
- 8. Our lawful bases
- 9. Who else sees your information
- 10. Where your information is held
- 11. How long we keep it
- 12. Artificial intelligence and automated decisions
- 13. Your rights
- 14. Security
- 15. Children
- 16. Changes to this policy
- 17. How to complain
1. Who we are and how to contact us
Field Friend Ltd, trading as FieldFriend, is a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17120050. Its registered office is shown at Companies House. We are the controller of the personal data described in this policy, which means we decide why and how it is used.
The FieldFriend app has its own privacy policy, at app.fieldfriend.africa/privacy. If you use the app as a farmer, an agent, or a member of staff of a scheme, cooperative, buyer or NGO, that policy covers what we hold about you in the app. Where it differs from this page, the app's policy is the one that counts.
For anything to do with your data, including a request to see, correct or delete it, write to james@fieldfriend.africa. If you are a farmer and prefer to speak to someone in person, tell your local FieldFriend agent and they will pass the request on.
We are not required to appoint a data protection officer and have not appointed one. Requests are handled by the company director.
2. If you only visit this website
This website sets no cookies and contains no advertising. We count visits using Vercel Web Analytics. It records which page was viewed, the website that sent you here, and your country, browser, operating system and type of device. It does not use cookies, does not store anything on your device, and does not follow you to other websites. To avoid counting the same visitor twice, Vercel uses a temporary code worked out from your request, which it discards within 24 hours. We only ever see totals, never individual visitors. There is no consent banner because this website stores nothing on your device. The pilot sign-up form on the front page opens on a Google page, which is covered in section 7.
Our hosting provider, Vercel, keeps short-lived server logs that include your IP address, the page you asked for and your browser type. These exist so the site can be served and so we can see if it is being attacked or is failing. We do not use them to build a profile of you.
The page uses typefaces served by Google Fonts, which means your browser makes a request to Google and Google receives your IP address as part of that request. If you would rather this did not happen, a browser or network-level content blocker will stop it, and the site will still work.
Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in running a working, secure website and in knowing how many people visit it.
3. If you are a farmer using FieldFriend
What we collect
- Who you are: your name, your phone number, and the language you prefer.
- Where you farm: your state, local government area and community, and, if you choose to share it, the GPS position of your field and how accurate that reading was. Sharing GPS is optional. If you share it, we look up publicly available soil and weather information for that place.
- How you farm: your crop and variety, the size of your field, your planting date, and your answers to the questions we ask when building your plan, such as what inputs you can get and what you did last season.
- Reporting details: your sex and your age band, where a project or funder you are enrolled in requires it for their own reporting. You do not have to give these to use FieldFriend.
- What you ask us: the questions you send to the FieldFriend companion, the answers it gives, and any photographs you send us for a pest or disease check.
- What happened: what you tell us about your harvest and your season, so that later advice can take it into account.
- Service records: which messages we sent you and when, whether you have opted out of messages, which agent registered you, and the record that this policy was read to you or by you.
What we use it for
- Building and updating your season plan, and sending it to you by app, SMS or WhatsApp.
- Answering your questions about your crop.
- Sending you timing reminders and alerts that relate to your own plan.
- Letting the cooperative, buyer or project you are registered with see that you are enrolled and how your season is going.
- Improving the advice FieldFriend gives, using your data in a form that does not identify you.
- Keeping the service secure, and preventing duplicate or fraudulent registrations.
We do not use it for advertising. We do not share it with anyone outside the list in section 9.
Sensitive information
We do not deliberately collect information about your health, your religion, your politics, your ethnicity or your trade union membership. If you happen to mention something of that kind while asking a question, it is held only as part of that conversation and is not used to categorise you. Please do not send us medical or financial details.
4. If you are a field agent
We hold your name, phone number, the area you cover, the farmers you register, your check-ins and field visits, and any photographs you upload as part of a visit. We use this to run the agent network, to attribute registrations, to calculate any payment or incentive due to you, and to check the quality and honesty of the data being collected. Some of this is visible to your supervising organisation and on internal leaderboards.
Lawful basis: performance of our agreement with you, and our legitimate interest in supervising the quality of field data.
5. If you work for a partner organisation
If you have an account as a staff member of a processor, cooperative, buyer, NGO or project, we hold your name, work email address or phone number, your organisation, and a log of your activity in the dashboard. We use it to give you access, to support you and to keep the account secure.
Lawful basis: performance of our contract with your organisation, and our legitimate interest in account security.
6. If you write to us
If you email us, we keep your message and your email address so we can reply and keep a record of the conversation. Our email runs on Google Workspace.
Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in answering people who contact us, and in keeping business records.
7. If you sign up through our pilot form
The front page of this website links to a Google form called "Join the FieldFriend pilot". It opens on a Google page, not a page of this website. This section explains what happens to the answers you give in that form. It applies only to people who use the form. If you later start to use the FieldFriend app, the app's own privacy policy (app.fieldfriend.africa/privacy) covers what we hold about you in the app from then. If you would rather not use the form, you can email us instead (see "If you email us instead" below).
What we collect
Everyone who uses the form is asked for:
- About you: your name; your phone number; whether we can reach you on WhatsApp on that number, and your WhatsApp number if it is different; your email address, if you choose to give one; and which description fits you best: farmer, service provider, processor or buyer, or something else.
- Where you are: your State, your local government area, and your town or village if you choose to give it.
The other questions depend on which description you choose.
- Farmers: the crops you grow, and your main crop; how much land you farm, and in which seasons; whether farming is your main income; who runs the farm, and who should receive advice; any cooperative, group or scheme you belong to; roughly how much you spent on your farm last season, how much you harvested, and who you sold to; where you buy seed and fertiliser; the services you paid for, and what is hard about getting them; where you get farming advice, how often an adviser visited you, whose advice you trust, and any farming app, WhatsApp group or SMS service you use; your biggest farming problems, and what you have tried; what you would like FieldFriend to help with; what kind of phone you use, how you would like to get advice, and in which language; and whether you would take a short call.
- Service providers (for example ploughing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, threshing or transport services): your business name, if you have one; the services and equipment you offer; the crops you work on, how far you travel and how many farmers you served; how you find customers; how often your equipment sits unused; your biggest business problems, and what you have tried; any app you use to find customers; and whether you would take a call.
- Processors and buyers: your business name and your role; whether you are the right person to talk to about working with farmers, and if not, the name and phone number of the right person; what your business does and which crops you buy; how much you buy or process in a year; how busy you are at different times of the year, and why you sometimes run below capacity; how many farmers supply you, and whether you give them inputs or loans; how you keep track of your farmers; your biggest supply problems, and what you have tried; and whether you would take a call.
- Something else (for example an NGO, government body, input dealer, extension service, researcher or investor): the name and kind of your organisation, how you would like to work with FieldFriend, and whether you would take a call.
- Everyone, at the end: how you heard about FieldFriend, and your two tick boxes.
- Recorded by the form: the date and time you sent it, and the wording of each tick box you ticked. That is our record of what you agreed to.
The answers come from you. You do not have to sign up. Questions marked as required must be answered before the form can be sent, and the rest you can leave blank. The form does not ask you to sign in to Google, and it does not record your Google account or the email address of that account.
The form does not ask about your health, religion, politics or ethnicity, or for bank, card, BVN or NIN numbers. Please do not write them in a box where you can type your own answer.
In one place the form asks for another person's name and phone number: if you are a processor or buyer and are not the right person to talk to. Give another person's details only if they agree. We use them only to contact that person about working with FieldFriend. When we first contact them, we tell them who we are, where we got their details, and that they can object and have their details deleted. We delete them if that person asks, and in any case with your other answers.
What we use it for
There are two purposes. Each has its own tick box, and you can agree to one and not the other.
- First tick box (needed to send the form): to keep your answers so that we can decide who to invite to the pilot, when, and where to start; to contact you about the pilot by phone call, text message, WhatsApp or, if you gave one, email; and to ask you more, if you said yes to a call.
- Second tick box (your choice): to improve FieldFriend, including finding out who it should serve and what to build first; and to share summaries or quotes from the answers with partners (organisations we work with) and with investors. They do not get your name, phone number, email address or business name, and we take out anything else that could show who you are. If you do not tick this box, we do not use your answers for this purpose, and we leave them out of anything we share. You can still join the pilot.
We do not use your answers for any other purpose, apart from the legal cases at the end of "Who receives it" below. They do not go into the FieldFriend app automatically.
Lawful basis: your consent, for each purpose separately (Article 6(1)(a) of the UK GDPR, and section 25(1)(a) of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023). You give it by ticking the box. The first box is needed to send the form, because we cannot consider you for the pilot or contact you without keeping your answers. The second box is not needed to send the form. You can take back either agreement at any time, as "Your rights, and how to withdraw" below explains. Taking it back does not undo what was lawful before. A summary or quote we have already shared cannot be taken back, but it does not name you.
The name and phone number of another person, given by a processor or buyer, are the one exception. For those, our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in reaching the right person in a business that has asked to work with us (Article 6(1)(f) of the UK GDPR, and section 25 of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023). That person can object at any time, and we then delete their details.
Who receives it
The FieldFriend team reads the answers. Google receives them, because Google runs the form and the spreadsheet where the answers are kept (Google Workspace, with Google Forms and Google Sheets). Google is one of the suppliers listed in section 9, and for your answers it acts on our instructions.
The form opens on a Google page, not on this website. Your phone connects to Google's servers, so Google receives your internet address, and Google may store cookies or similar files on your device, as it does for any Google page. Google's own privacy policy covers this: policies.google.com/privacy. Our statement in section 2 that this website sets no cookies is about this website only.
When we contact you, the company that carries the call or message receives your phone number and the message: Meta for WhatsApp, our SMS gateway if we send text messages through one, Google for email, and the phone networks for calls and texts. Meta, our SMS gateway and Google are listed in section 9.
Partners and investors receive summaries or quotes without your name, and only if you ticked the second box. They do not receive the answers themselves.
Your answers go to nobody else, except in the cases in the last paragraph of section 9: when the law requires it, to establish or defend a legal claim, or if FieldFriend is sold or merged.
Where your answers are held
Google holds the answers on its servers in the United States, Europe and other countries. FieldFriend is run from the United Kingdom, and the FieldFriend team reads the answers there. So information about a person in Nigeria goes from Nigeria to Google's servers, and is read in the United Kingdom.
- Under UK law we use a UK adequacy decision where one covers the country (the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for a US company that is certified under it). Otherwise we use the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, together with an assessment of the risk in that country.
- Under Nigerian law (Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, sections 41 to 43) we transfer information only where the receiving country or company gives adequate protection, under contract terms that bind the recipient to that protection, or on another basis the Act allows.
You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards for any transfer.
How long we keep it
We keep your answers for up to 2 years after you sent them, and then delete them. We check once a month, and each time we delete the answers that will be 2 years old before the next check. We delete them sooner if you ask us to, or if you take back your agreement to be contacted. We delete them from the form and from the spreadsheet, and we delete any copy we made to contact you, such as a phone contact. After that, a copy can stay in Google's systems for a limited time, up to the period in our contract with Google, and is then deleted. We may keep summaries that name no one for as long as they are useful. If you start to use the FieldFriend app, what we hold about you there is kept for the times in the app's privacy policy. Your answers in this form are still deleted after 2 years at most.
Your rights, and how to withdraw
You have all the rights listed in section 13, and the same rights under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (sections 34 to 38). To take back either agreement, or to ask to see, correct or delete your answers, write to james@fieldfriend.africa. Give the name and phone number you used, so that we can find your answers. You do not need to give a reason. If you cannot write, tell the person who contacts you, and they will pass your request on. Every message we send you about FieldFriend tells you how to stop them.
If you take back the first agreement, we stop contacting you as soon as we have your message, and delete your answers within one month. If you take back only the second, we stop using your answers to improve FieldFriend, and we leave them out of anything we share from then on. We keep them for the first purpose. We answer within one month. There is no charge. We may check that it is really you, usually by a message to the phone number you gave. You can also complain to a regulator, as section 17 explains.
If you email us instead
You can email james@fieldfriend.africa instead of using the form, for example if you run a business and would rather write than fill in a form. What you send, and your email address, are covered by section 6, not by this section.
Age
Only adults can use the form. You must be 18 or older. If you think a person under 18 has signed up, write to us and we will delete the answers (see also section 15).
Language
The form and this policy are in English. If you would like help to understand either, ask someone you trust to read it with you, or email us, before you sign up.
8. Our lawful bases
UK data protection law requires us to have a specific reason, called a lawful basis, for each thing we do with your data.
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Build and send your season plan, answer your questions, send plan reminders | Performance of a contract with you. This is the service you asked for, and we cannot provide it without this information. |
| Collect and store your GPS position | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. The service still works without it, with less precise advice. |
| Record your sex and age band for a project's reporting | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. |
| Show your enrolment and season progress to the cooperative, buyer or project you are registered with | Our legitimate interest, and theirs, in running the programme you joined. You are told which organisation this is at registration. |
| Improve FieldFriend's advice using data that does not identify you | Our legitimate interest in making agricultural advice more accurate for everyone. |
| Keep the service secure and prevent fraudulent or duplicate accounts | Our legitimate interest in protecting the service and the people who use it. |
| Send you messages about FieldFriend that are not about your own plan | Your consent. Every such message tells you how to stop them. |
| Keep the answers you give in the pilot sign-up form to decide who to invite to the pilot, and contact you about it (first tick box, section 7) | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. The form cannot be sent without the tick. Every message we send you tells you how to stop them. |
| Use the answers you give in the pilot sign-up form to improve FieldFriend, and share summaries or quotes without your name with partners and investors (second tick box, section 7) | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. The box is optional, and you can still join the pilot if you do not tick it. |
| Contact the person a processor or buyer names in the pilot sign-up form as the right person to talk to (section 7) | Our legitimate interest in reaching the right person in a business that has asked to work with us. When we first contact that person, we tell them where we got their details, and they can object. |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interest against your rights and concluded that ours does not override yours. You can ask us for that reasoning, and you can object (see section 13).
9. Who else sees your information
Inside FieldFriend, access is limited to the people who need it: the FieldFriend team, and the field agent who registered you or supports you.
Outside FieldFriend, your information is shared with:
- The organisation you are registered with, if any. That is the cooperative, processor, buyer, NGO or project that enrolled you. They see only their own farmers.
- Suppliers who run parts of the service for us. They act on our instructions and may not use your data for their own purposes. They are:
| Supplier | What they do |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Holds the database and manages sign-in |
| Vercel | Hosts the website and application |
| Anthropic | Provides the AI model that drafts answers to your questions. Your inputs are not used to train their models. |
| Meta Platforms | Delivers WhatsApp messages, where you use that channel |
| Our SMS gateway | Delivers text messages to your phone |
| Resend | Sends email notifications |
| Google (Workspace) | Runs our company email, and the pilot sign-up form and the spreadsheet where its answers are kept (section 7) |
We will also disclose information if the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim. If FieldFriend is ever sold or merged, your information may pass to the buyer, and we will tell you before that happens.
10. Where your information is held
FieldFriend is run from the United Kingdom, and UK data protection law applies to everything described here, wherever you live.
Some of our suppliers are based outside the United Kingdom, mainly in the United States and the European Union. Where we send personal data to a country the UK has not judged to provide adequate protection, we rely on the safeguards UK law allows: the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, together with an assessment of the risk in that country.
If you are in Nigeria and are enrolled with a Nigerian organisation, your record is visible to that organisation in Nigeria on the same basis.
You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer.
11. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account, farm details and plans | While you are registered, and for 24 months after your last activity. Then deleted or stripped of anything that identifies you. |
| Your questions and the answers given | 24 months |
| The answers you gave in the pilot sign-up form (section 7) | Up to 2 years after you sent them, or sooner if you ask us to delete them or take back your agreement to be contacted. Then deleted. Summaries that name no one are kept for as long as they are useful. |
| Message delivery logs | 12 months |
| The record that this policy was given to you, and which version | 6 years after your account closes, because it is our evidence that we did so |
| Season and yield history in a form that does not identify you | Kept indefinitely, so that advice keeps improving |
| Website server logs | As long as our hosting provider retains them, typically about 30 days |
If you ask us to delete your FieldFriend record, we do so, but we keep the minimum needed to show that you were once registered and that you asked to be removed. This does not apply to answers in the pilot sign-up form, which we delete as section 7 explains.
12. Artificial intelligence and automated decisions
Parts of FieldFriend are automated. Your season plan is assembled by software from agricultural research, your farm details and local weather. Answers to your questions are drafted by an AI model working from a library of agricultural guides.
Two things follow from that, and we would rather say them plainly.
- The advice can be wrong. It is guidance to help you decide, not an instruction, and it is never a guarantee of a yield or an income. Always check anything that involves spending money, applying an agrochemical, or a risk to your health.
- You can always reach a person. Nothing in FieldFriend makes a decision about you, by itself, that has a legal or similarly significant effect. We do not score you for credit, and we do not decide on anyone's behalf whether you get a loan, an input or a contract. If a partner organisation ever wants to use FieldFriend data that way, we will tell you first and explain your rights before it happens.
If you think an answer FieldFriend gave you was wrong, tell your agent or write to us. We want to know.
13. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- ask what we hold about you, and get a copy;
- have anything wrong corrected;
- have your information deleted;
- ask us to stop using it while a dispute is sorted out;
- object to our using it on the basis of legitimate interests;
- receive the information you gave us in a portable format, or have it sent to another provider;
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we relied on consent. Withdrawing it does not undo what was lawful before.
To use any of these, write to james@fieldfriend.africa or tell your local agent. We answer within one month. There is no charge. We may ask you to confirm your identity, usually by a code sent to your registered phone number, so that nobody else can get at your record.
To stop receiving messages, reply STOP to any SMS, or tell your agent. Messages that are essential to a plan you asked for will stop too, so tell us if you only want the promotional ones to stop.
14. Security
Access to the database is restricted by row-level security rules, so an account can only reach the records it is entitled to. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to production data is limited to the FieldFriend team. Photographs uploaded by agents are held in a restricted store.
No system is perfect. If a breach happens that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of finding out, and, where people in Nigeria may be at risk, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission within 72 hours too. We will tell you directly if the risk to you is high.
15. Children
FieldFriend is for adults who farm. It is not designed for or directed at children, and we do not knowingly register anyone under 18. If you believe a child has been registered, write to us and we will remove the record.
16. Changes to this policy
We version this policy and record which version you were given. If we change it in a way that affects you, we will tell you through the app or by message, and we will not apply a new purpose to information already collected without a proper basis for doing so.
17. How to complain
Please tell us first, so we have the chance to put it right: james@fieldfriend.africa.
If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.
If you are in Nigeria, you may also complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission at ndpc.gov.ng.