Privacy Policy

This website is run by The Farmer-Owned Project, Inc., a Delaware nonprofit corporation ("we," "us"). We run the Certified Farmer-Owned program, which operates the Certified Farmer-Owned standard and certification mark. Our mailing address is 615 S College St, 9th Floor, Charlotte, NC 28202.

Questions or requests about your information: info@farmerownedproject.org.

We collect only what we need for the purposes in Section 3.

• Farmer registration form: business legal name, brand name, your name, email, phone (optional), country or region, a short description of what the business produces, and a record of the policies you agreed to and when.
• Newsletter sign-up: your email address, and nothing else.
• Donations: you pay on a page hosted by Stripe, our payment processor. Stripe collects your payment details. We never see or store full card numbers. We receive your name, email, billing address, the amount, the date, a transaction reference, and any business name you choose to give. We use your billing address to meet state charitable registration requirements.
• Email you send us: the message and your address.
• Technical data: when you visit, our hosting provider (Cloudflare) records things like your IP address, browser, device type, the pages you viewed, and the page that referred you, using cookieless analytics. If you accept analytics cookies, Google Analytics also collects pseudonymous identifiers, your approximate location, and how you use the site. If you accept marketing cookies, advertising services can recognize your browser so we can show you program updates later (see Section 4). We use this to keep the site secure and to understand which pages help people. We do not put your name, email, or form answers into analytics or advertising tools.

What we do not collect on this website: ownership documents, tax filings, financial statements, or other farmer-evidence documents. Those are handled separately, directly with the Certification Body, if and when you move to a full application (see our Confidentiality & Data Handling Policy).

• To respond to you and follow up on your farmer registration.
• To connect registered farmers with the Certification Body, once it is appointed, so it can begin intake and the full application (see Section 5).
• To send program updates you asked for: the Standard, the Founding Cohort, and launch news. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• To process, acknowledge, and keep records of donations, including sending written donation acknowledgments and thanking donors.
• To keep the site and forms secure and prevent spam and abuse.
• To understand how the site is used and improve it, using analytics (with your consent for Google Analytics).
• If you accept marketing cookies: to show program updates to people who visited the site (retargeting) and to measure whether that works.
• To meet legal, accounting, and tax obligations.

We do not sell your personal information. The only advertising use is the optional marketing cookies in Section 4: if you accept them, cookie identifiers and visit data may go to advertising services (such as Google) so we can show you our updates. Under some state laws that counts as "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising. You can refuse it with the cookie settings or a Global Privacy Control signal, and we honor both. We do not use your information to evaluate your ingredients, sourcing, or growing practices, because the program does not certify those things.

When you first visit, we ask which optional cookies you allow. Nothing optional runs until you choose, and "Reject optional" is as easy as "Accept all". You can change your mind at any time with "Cookie settings" in the footer of every page. We also treat a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as a "no" to marketing cookies.

• Necessary: keep the site and forms working and secure (for example the spam check on forms). Always on. Cloudflare's cookieless analytics also run without cookies.
• Analytics (only if you accept): Google Analytics 4, provided by Google LLC. It sets cookies and uses pseudonymous identifiers to count visits and show us which pages and sources help people. We have limited Google's optional data-sharing settings and keep analytics data for 14 months. We do not send your name, email, or form answers to it.
• Marketing (only if you accept): Google Analytics advertising features, including Google signals and remarketing, provided by Google LLC. If you accept, Google can link your visits to the information in your Google account (only if you are signed in with Ads Personalization turned on), so we can understand our audience and, later, show program updates to people who visited this site and measure the result. These features are switched on, but we have not started any advertising campaigns yet. Before we do, we will name any other advertising services we use here. We do not build advertising audiences from our registration, contribution, or thank-you pages, and we do not send your email address or other contact details to advertising services. If you refuse, or later withdraw, these features cannot recognize your browser through this site. How Google uses information from sites that use its services: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites . Control ad personalization: https://adssettings.google.com . Opt out of Google Analytics: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout .

If you withdraw consent, we stop the optional tools and remove the Google cookies we can reach, but data already collected stays in the provider's systems for its retention period. Your browser settings can also block or delete cookies.

When you click through to Stripe to contribute, Stripe sets its own cookies under its own privacy policy.

We share personal information only with the parties below, only as needed to operate the program, and only for the purposes described in this policy:

• Service providers that run our website and operations: Cloudflare (hosting, security, cookieless analytics), Google LLC (Google Analytics and, if you accept marketing cookies, its advertising services), HighLevel (our contact management and email platform), Stripe (payments), Google Workspace (email and documents), and internal project-management tools. Each is bound by its own terms and by our requirement that it use the data only to serve us.
• Our Farms, Inc.: our founders also founded Our Farms, Inc. It administers the contact-management platform account on our behalf as a service provider. It does not use your information for its own marketing.
• Certification Body: if you register as a farmer or brand and consent on the form, we share what you submitted with the Certification Body, once it is appointed and under a written agreement that limits its use of the information to intake and certification, so it can begin the full application.
• Authorities or courts, only where the law requires it, or to protect rights, safety, or the integrity of the program.
• A successor organization, if the program's standard and records are ever transferred to another nonprofit or farmer-governed body. We would require it to honor this policy.

Certified Entities are listed in our public certification record and directory, because the public needs to be able to verify a Certification. Beyond that, we will not publish your name, your farm, or your status in launch material or donor recognition without confirming with you first how you want to be listed.

We email you only if you registered, subscribed, donated, or wrote to us. Every marketing-style email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also write to us to be removed. We will still send essential messages about something you asked for, such as a donation acknowledgment.

Text messages. We do not currently send text messages. If we start, we will ask for your separate, express consent first, tell you what kinds of messages to expect and roughly how often, and honor STOP and other opt-out requests. Message and data rates may apply. We will not share mobile numbers or text-message consent with third parties for their own marketing. A phone number you give us on the registration form is used only to contact you about your registration unless you opt in to texts.

These are our starting figures, subject to legal review:

• Farmer registrations: until you ask us to delete the record, or 24 months after our last contact with you, whichever comes first. If you move on to a full application, the Certification Body's records follow the schedule in our Confidentiality & Data Handling Policy.
• Newsletter subscribers: until you unsubscribe.
• Donation records: 7 years after the donation, to meet accounting and tax recordkeeping needs.
• Website security logs: kept for a short period set by the provider, generally no longer than 12 months. Google Analytics data: 14 months.
• Emails you send us: as long as needed to answer you and for our records, then deleted on a regular schedule.

We use encrypted connections (HTTPS) across the site, restrict access to the people who need it, use reputable providers with strong security practices, and screen forms for spam and abuse. No system is perfectly secure. If an incident exposes your information, we will notify you as the law requires and as quickly as reasonably possible.

You can ask us to tell you what information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop emailing you. We respond within 30 days. We offer these choices to everyone, not only where a particular law requires it. Depending on where you live (for example California or other U.S. states with privacy laws), you may have additional legal rights, and we will honor them. To make a request, email info@farmerownedproject.org. We may need to confirm it is really you before acting on it, and we may keep information we are legally required to keep.

This site is for adults and businesses. It is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has sent us information, tell us and we will delete it.

We are based in the United States and our providers process data in the United States and other countries. If you contact us from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred to and handled in the U.S.

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we will update the version date on this page, and where we can, tell people who registered or subscribed.