# The pre-competitive network: private by default, pre-competitive by choice > On Farmer1st's pre-competitive network, everything a buyer brings stays private by default: its farmer registry, plot polygons, prices, volumes and supplier relationships. When buyers, governments or programmes agree, they can pool what none of them should pay for twice, such as fraud detection, agronomic knowledge, farmer access for surveys or common farmer records, on terms they set together. The same farmers sell to several buyers and join several programmes. What you bring stays yours. When buyers decide something shouldn't be paid for twice, the network lets them share it, on terms they set together. ## What stays yours, and what can you choose to share? The line is simple. Everything you bring stays private unless you decide otherwise. What buyers agree to pool is shared only among them, on terms they set together. Never imposed. **Pre-competitive** — What buyers agree to pool, on terms they set together. Fraud detection across buyers; Agronomic knowledge base; Farmer access for surveys; Common farmer records. **Yours alone** — Nobody sees them unless you decide. Farmer registry; Plot polygons; Prices & volumes; Supplier relationships. - **Your call** — Nothing is shared unless you and the other buyers decide. - **Shared cost** — What you pool is paid for once, not by each buyer separately. - **Fraud caught across buyers** — Without exposing one buyer's data to another. - **Farmers asked once** — When buyers pool their surveys, not again and again. ## What can buyers choose to pool? Four things that every actor in the first mile needs and that get better the more actors pool them, plus one rule that applies to all of them. Each is pooled only when the buyers concerned agree. - **Fraud detection across buyers** — The same plot declared by two suppliers, volumes that exceed what a plot can produce, identities reused across cooperatives: these patterns only appear when you look across buyers. The network detects them without showing anyone another buyer's data. See fraud detection. - **The agronomic knowledge base** — Good agricultural practices, pest and disease guidance, climate adaptation: knowledge that helps every farmer and belongs to no single buyer. It powers the AI agronomist that farmers and field agents consult. - **Farmer access for surveys** — Consented, verified access to a targeted population of farmers — by country, region, gender, age or commodity. Farmers are fairly compensated for their contribution. See farmer surveys. - **Common farmer records** — When buyers agree, the basic verified facts about a farmer they all work with can be kept in common, so the farmer is not registered three times with three different spellings. Each buyer's own registry and plot polygons stay private. - **Farmer consent, always** — Whatever buyers decide to pool, what a farmer has agreed to share, with whom and for what, is recorded and respected everywhere on the network. ## Why is pooling cheaper and more reliable, when buyers choose it? - **No duplicated effort** — Today each buyer pays separately for the same checks, the same advice and the same survey outreach. What buyers pool is paid for once. - **Errors surface faster** — When buyers agree to keep common farmer records, a duplicate identity is spotted and corrected once, for all of them. - **Fraud has fewer places to hide** — Among buyers who pool fraud detection, a plot cannot be sold twice without the network noticing, even when the two buyers never talk to each other. - **Farmers get their time back** — When programmes pool their surveys, farmers are asked for the same facts once. Their answers are better when they are not tired of the question. ## How do competitors share a network without seeing each other's business? The principles are strict, and they apply to every actor in the same way. - **Private by default** — Each organisation works in its own space. Your farmer registry, plot polygons and commercial data are not visible to another organisation unless you explicitly decide to share them. - **Signals, not raw data** — Cross-buyer checks return a signal — this plot is already declared, this identity is inconsistent — never the other buyer's name, prices or volumes. - **Farmer consent decides** — Shared data about a farmer is used only for the purposes the farmer consented to. Consent is recorded per use and can be revoked for future uses. - **Every access is logged** — An audit trail records who accessed what and when, so the rules can be verified rather than trusted. See trust and farmer data. ## What do buyers usually ask about the pre-competitive model? ### Can a competitor see which farmers supply us? No. Supplier relationships are private. A competitor may work with the same farmer, but never sees that you do, nor what you buy, at what price or in what volume. ### If fraud is detected across buyers, who is told what? Each buyer receives a signal about its own supply — for example, that a plot it received has also been declared elsewhere. The other buyer is not named, and no commercial data changes hands. ### Do we have to share anything to use Farmer1st? No. Every service works on your private data alone. Pooling is offered, never a condition: you decide whether to share anything, with which buyers and on which terms. ## See what buyers in your supply chain could choose to pool. Tell us about your commodities and origins, and we come back with a first sketch of your service. Describe your need, get a prototype: https://farmer1st.org/en/get-a-prototype/ ## Frequently asked questions ### What does pre-competitive mean in agricultural supply chains? It describes the work that every company in a sector needs and that gives none of them a competitive edge — such as detecting fraud across buyers or building agronomic advice. Companies that choose to do it together lower costs and raise quality, while each competes on price, quality and relationships. ### Who pays for what buyers pool? What buyers pool is paid for once through the services that use it, on terms the participating buyers set together, instead of each of them funding its own duplicate. That is why it costs less for each participant. ### How are farmers protected on the network? Farmers control what is shared, with whom and for what purpose. Consent is recorded per use, farmers can see who uses their data, and they can revoke consent for future uses. ### Can governments and NGOs join the network? Yes. National programmes, NGOs, donors and banks work on the same terms: their data stays private by default, and they can pool survey access or other work with other participants when they agree to. Where a national system exists, Farmer1st integrates with it rather than competing with it.