Farmer surveys and impact measurement for NGOs, donors, banks and researchers

Most programmes know their farmers through intermediaries, lists and occasional field studies. Farmer1st is the first-mile infrastructure built around farmers: a farmer-controlled network where companies, governments and organisations collect, verify and share origin data, and build the services they need on top of it. For NGOs, donors, banks, development agencies and researchers, it means asking the right farmers directly and following what changes.

How can we survey a targeted population of farmers?

Farmer surveys reach a population you define: a country or region, a crop, a gender, an age range. Farmers answer on their phones or with a field agent, offline-first, with voice and local languages. Answers are consented, verified and linked to a known farmer, so results are traceable and duplicates are caught. Farmers are fairly compensated for their contribution.

A few examples of what this looks like:

• a bank studying access to finance among farmers in a region before designing a product;
• an NGO looking at women’s access to health services in a region;
• an agency measuring good agricultural practices among farmers aged 20 to 60 in a country.

What is the impact loop?

A survey tells you where the gaps are. The impact loop closes them and shows that they closed:

1. Survey the targeted population on health, finance, farming practices or any other topic.
2. Analyse the gaps by population and area.
3. Train where it matters, pushing training to the farmers who need it.
4. Measure with quizzes where knowledge is still insufficient.
5. Re-train those farmers until the gap is closed.
6. Report the impact on your indicators.

The details are on Measure and steer your impact.

How do training and quizzes reach farmers?

Training & quizzes delivers short modules through the farmer app or through field agents, in local languages. Quizzes follow each module. Results are recorded per farmer, so you see who has understood, who needs another round, and where a topic is harder than expected. The AI agronomist answers farmers’ own questions between sessions.

How do we report impact on SDGs, donor KPIs and living income?

Because every answer, training and quiz result is linked to the same farmer, change can be measured over time for the same people. Results can be reported against the UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as no poverty, zero hunger, gender equality and climate action, against your donor’s KPIs, and against living income benchmarks. Human rights data from human rights due diligence and climate data from carbon projects can sit in the same report.

Why run this on the pre-competitive network?

Many programmes ask the same farmers the same questions. On the pre-competitive network, organisations can choose to pool farmer access for surveys, so farmers are asked once rather than again and again, and each organisation keeps its own data and results private. Farmers decide what is shared, with whom and for what. See Trust.

Where do we start?

Describe your population, your question and the indicators you report on. We prototype the survey and the loop with you in the Nursery and refine it as results come in.