Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy document contains types of information that is collected and recorded by us and how we use it.

FarmTrace website

FarmBX operates the Farmtrace.com website, which provides the SERVICE. This page is used to inform website visitors regarding our policies with the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information if anyone decided to use our Service, the Farmtrace.com website.

If you choose to use our Service, then you agree to the collection and use of information in relation with this policy. The Personal Information that we collect are used for providing and improving the Service. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.

The terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms and Conditions, which is accessible at Farmtrace.com, unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy.

Information Collection and Use

For a better experience while using our Service, we may require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your name, phone number, and postal address. The information that we collect will be used to contact or identify you only when you express interest in the FarmTrace products or request further information.

Log Data

We want to inform you that whenever you visit our Service, we collect information that your browser sends to us that is called Log Data. This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser version, pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics.

Cookies

Cookies are files with small amount of data that is commonly used an anonymous unique identifier. These are sent to your browser from the website that you visit and are stored on your computer’s hard drive.

Our website uses these cookies to collection information and to improve our Service. You have the option to either accept or refuse these cookies, and know when a cookie is being sent to your computer. If you choose to refuse our cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.

Service Providers

We may employ third-party companies and individuals due to the following reasons:

  • To facilitate our Service;
  • To provide the Service on our behalf;
  • To perform Service-related services; or
  • To assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.
  • We want to inform our Service users that these third parties have access to your Personal Information. The reason is to perform the tasks assigned to them on our behalf. However, they are obligated not to disclose or use the information for any other purpose.

Security

We value your trust in providing us your Personal Information, thus we are striving to use commercially acceptable means of protecting it. But remember that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable, and we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Links to Other Sites

Our Service may contain links to other sites. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that site. Note that these external sites are not operated by us. Therefore, we strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of these websites. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

Children’s Privacy

Our Services do not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 13. In the case we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we immediately delete this from our servers. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we will be able to do necessary actions.

FarmTrace Services

Farm Connection process

Farm Connection is the process by which Farm data is collected from individual Farms with consent of the Farm Contact. The Farm Contact is the person authorized by the Farm Business Entity to connect the FarmTrace software to the systems of the farm, or consent to sharing data on behalf of the farm owner and FarmTrace.

The collected data is standardized in the FarmTrace Platform and made available to Customers using FarmTrace products. Only Customers to whom the Farm Contact has given consent may access that Farm’s data.

FarmTrace Connect

FarmTrace Connect is the name of the application used by FarmTrace to connect to the systems of a Farm. Those systems include (but are not limited to) milking robots, milking parlors, farm management software, laboratory analysis, animal registration, milk recording and feed calculation.

Personal data processing

The personal data listed below is collected and processed during the Farm Connection process, and throughout the period during which the Farm remains connected to the FarmTrace Platform.

  • name(s) of the main representative(s) of the farm;
  • contact details, including the location(s) of the farm, e-mail address(es) and telephone number(s); and
  • business registration number(s) such as a VAT number.

We also process data regarding your farm (Farm Data). This may include:

  • animal data (animal ID number, date of birth, breed, sex, etc.);
  • specific animal related events (calving, pregnancies, inseminations, etc.);
  • animal production data (both milk and calves) including quality data;
  • feed consumption per animal (including concentrate);
  • animal health data (temperature, medication, etc.);
  • business data (milk production and quality, milk revenues, overall feed consumption); and
  • environmental data (manure production, CO2 emission, etc.).

This data originates from:

  • The Customer, who provides FarmTrace with information about the farms they want to connect to.
  • The input of the Farm Contact as they fill in the Farm Connection questionnaire.
  • 3rd party contacts and suppliers of the farm, as input in the systems of the farmer

Purposes and collection of data

We process your contact details for the purposes of communicating with you during the farm connection process, troubleshooting of technical issues with the FarmTrace Connect software and assistance with uninstalling the software. Your address may be used to find the correct Third Party (for example, the regional laboratory used for milk analysis).

We process Farm Data to provide the best possible service to you, including optimal data analysis. To accomplish this, we need to have automated access to the best and most recent data regarding your farm through one or more internet connections. The Farmtrace Platform links both the systems at your farm as well as systems of relevant third parties that you may use (e.g. feed producers, milk processors, etc. which you have chosen to support farming activities). You may need to install the FarmTrace Connect software on your computer system(s). This software will automatically transfer Farm Data to us.

In addition to obtaining the Farm Data through a direct connection between your farm’s systems and us, we may collect Farm Data from third parties and process it through the FarmTrace Platform. We will only collect your Farm Data from third parties after obtaining additional prior approval from you. During the FarmTrace farm connection process, you may be asked to give permission via signature of an authorization form or by allowing access through a separate interface made available to you by the providers you have chosen. For example, we may with your permission source Farm Data from your milk processor, any laboratories that you use, governmental authorities or a provider of veterinary services. In addition to this authorization form, specific terms and conditions for our use of such Farm Data may apply for each third party data source.

FarmTrace facilitates the automated data exchange at the request of our Customer. FarmTrace processes your personal data and Farm Data on behalf of the Customer, so that they can provide you the services under the agreement to which you are a party. As such, FarmTrace acts as a processor for our Customer within the meaning of the GDPR.

FarmTrace also processes some of your data for its own purposes as a controller within the meaning of the GDPR. FarmTrace monitors your use of the FarmTrace Platform both for (i) internal compliance with contractual arrangements, laws and regulations, and security reasons (ii) for statistical purposes and (iii) for the purpose of improving FarmTrace’s services to you and other customers. This may include, but is not limited to:

a) User interactions: This encompasses actions taken within the FarmTrace platform, such as data entry, feature usage, and system navigation.
b) System performance metrics: This refers to technical data about the Service’s performance, such as response times, resource utilization, and error rates.
c) Error logs: This includes detailed records of encountered errors and system malfunctions.
d) Configuration settings: This covers specific customizations and preferences applied by the Customer within the Service.
e) Customer Success Management and/or Sales efforts, limited to personal data concerning the Customer representative(s), such as name, role and contact information.

This data serves critical purposes, enabling FarmTrace to: (1) identify and rectify technical issues impacting functionality and performance; (2) analyze system performance to proactively address potential bottlenecks and optimize resource allocation, ensuring consistent service delivery; and (3) utilize user interactions and usage patterns to enhance existing features, develop new functionalities, and refine the overall user experience. Additionally, benchmarking analyses leveraging this data may be conducted to ensure the Service remains competitive and delivers optimal value to Customers.

FarmTrace shall, both during the term of its relationship with our Customer and thereafter, keep an anonymized copy of your data as part of a database containing aggregated/anonymized data or the purpose of:

  • Data validation to troubleshoot our data analysis
  • Find errors in the source system
  • Identification of trends
  • Product development
  • Benchmarking purposes

In doing so, FarmTrace prioritizes user privacy and will anonymize data whenever legally mandated for the applicable data categories.

Stop sending Farm Data

If you have FarmTrace Connect installed on your system, you can stop sending data at any time by simply uninstalling the application. Follow the steps described in our FAQ to uninstall FarmTrace Connect.
Alternatively, send us an email to helpdesk@farmtrace.com to stop processing of your data.

TeamViewer credentials

In certain circumstances, such as when we experience a loss of connection or issues with the initial installation, we may request permission to use TeamViewer to investigate your system. This request is made solely for the purpose of troubleshooting and resolving technical issues and verifying the original data in the source system, and it will only be initiated with your explicit consent. We assure you that any access granted will be temporary and used exclusively to address the specific problem at hand. We will not access, share, or store any personal information or data unrelated to the issue under investigation.

3rd parties

In the course of FarmTrace business activities, it may happen that your personal data is transferred to or disclosed to a subsidiary of FarmTrace or disclosed to other legal entities providing services to FarmTrace (e.g. payment institutions for transactions, service providers commissioned with IT tasks).

FarmTrace may transfer your personal data to a subsidiary or grant them access to such data. Such transfer or access right is solely carried out if it is necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations under an agreement, or if the consent of the data subject concerned has been obtained. In case of service providers, the involved service providers will process your personal data on behalf of FarmTrace and/or our Customer. The processing by service providers is subject to a processing agreement by which FarmTrace has ensured that the service provider will process the personal data in accordance with our instructions and the applicable law.

In order to comply with EU legislation on data protection in the event of international data transfers, for the most part the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), FarmTrace allows service providers outside of the EEA to process your personal data only if FarmTrace and the service provider have concluded a contract containing the model contract clauses laid down by the European Commission, thereby ensuring that appropriate data protection safeguards are in place.

Examples of service providers with which FarmTrace shares data for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by FarmTrace or after having received your consent, namely to provide the services to you, are:

  • Rovecom, for displaying the data in a dashboard on behalf of the Customer
  • Microsoft Cloud Services, for document storage and management, sending emails, exchanging documents with specific recipients and participating in audio and video conferences.
  • Salesforce, for administration of FarmTrace customers and leads.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud, for sending Farm Connection and marketing emails.
  • Azure services (Cloud, DevOps) for our software development
  • Zendesk for our Support team to manage tickets

Aside from our website, we are also active on a number of social networks. If you visit us there, your personal data may be forwarded to the relevant social network. It is possible that the data you entered specifically in the social network, as well as other information, are collected, analyzed and used by the provider of that social network.

Retention

We retain any personal data for as long as our Customer requires access to the farm system data. We will remove any personal data on request from either our Customer or the data subject (Farm Contact, Customer Representative, etc).

In the absence of a request to remove personal data, we will keep personal data up to 2 years after it is no longer available to the Customer.

Security

The safety of your data is crucial to us. As such, we have taken a number of measures to keep any personal data secure:

  • Physical security policy.
  • Internal IT security: MFA policy, Employee Device Management policy, antivirus policy, systems monitoring & logging, RBAC – Role Based Access Control.
  • Infrastructure security (Dev Ops): Firewall policy, network segmentation policy, security patching policy, systems monitoring & logging, VPN policy for secure access of production.
  • Secure Software Development Lifecycle.
  • Security awareness training executed company-wide.
  • Vendor management policy.
  • Regular penetration tests from specialized companies.

Recruitment

This section of our Privacy Statement describes why and how we collect and use personal data in connection with our recruitment activities.

Collection of personal data

We will collect personal data in connection with our recruitment activities as described below. Most of the personal data we collect as part of our recruitment process is provided by you, such as:

  • Contact details (name, email, telephone number);
  • Areas of interest;
  • Username and password in order to get access to the recruitment application system;
  • CV, experience, education, academic and professional qualifications;
  • Information from interviews and assessments.

Details about performing ancillary activities, except for obviously private affairs, which must be reported to FarmTrace for the purpose of complying with applicable independence rules.
* We do not want to receive BSN or social security numbers in the context of our recruitment activities.

We process personal data in connection with our recruitment activities such as:

  • Interview and assessment results and feedback;
  • Offer details.

We obtain personal data from third party sources such as:

  • References from your named referees;
  • Information from your referrer (where applicable);
  • Verification of information provided during the recruitment process by contacting relevant third parties (for example, previous employers, education and qualification providers) or using publicly available sources (for example, to verify your experience, education and qualifications);
  • Pre-employment screening information if your application is successful; and
  • Information from social media sites that you are a member of about your engagement with our recruitment campaigns.

Use of personal data

We process personal data for our legitimate interests to attract and secure the best talent to work with us as follows:

  • To attract talent and market opportunities at FarmTrace trough arranging, hosting and participating in events, marketing and advertising opportunities and using recruiters to help find talent for us;
  • To identify and source talent including by searching our existing talent pool and publicly available sources (such as social media and job websites of which you are a member);
  • To process and manage applications for roles at FarmTrace, evaluate you for open positions that match your interests and experience throughout the FarmTrace network, manage your candidate profile, send you email notifications and other announcements, request additional information or otherwise contact you about your candidacy;
  • To screen and select talent by evaluating your suitability for employment with FarmTrace, through interviews;
  • To hire and onboard talent by making an offer to successful applicants;
  • To conduct statistical analyses and create reports including for example regarding usage of our careers website, demographic analysis of candidates, reports on FarmTrace recruitment activities, and analysis of candidate sourcing channels;
  • To administer and manage our careers websites and communicate with you about careers at FarmTrace; and
  • Any other purposes stated when you provide the information to FarmTrace.

We carry out background checks records checks for the following purposes:

  • To comply with our legal obligation to ensure an individual is eligible to work in the NL.
  • When and how we share personal data and locations of processing

Data retention

We retain personal data processed in connection with our recruitment activities as follows:

If your application is successful we will retain relevant personal data as part of your employee record and your talent pool account (if you choose to join our talent pool).

If your application is unsuccessful, we will retain and use the information you provided to FarmTrace as part of your application for a reasonable period of time but a maximum of 4 weeks, to deal with any matter which may arise in connection with your application, for purposes of contacting you regarding other employment opportunities and for our legitimate business purposes (for example, to make sure we do not contact an individual about a role they have already applied for) and for as long as you are a member of our talent pool (if you choose to join our talent pool for a period of maximum 12 months).

Your rights under GDPR

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have specific rights regarding the processing of your personal data.

  • You have the right to confirm whether we process your data, and if so, to be informed of the specific data collected and the purpose of its processing.
  • If you discover inaccuracies in your data, you have the right to rectify it at any time.
  • You can request the erasure of your personal data under the right to be forgotten, subject to certain legal considerations (where FarmTrace can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing).
  • In specific circumstances, you may also request the restriction of processing.
  • You have the right to receive your data in a machine-readable format and transfer it to another provider of your choice.
  • Should you object to the processing of your personal data based on FarmTrace’s legitimate interest or processing on behalf of a data controller, we will cease processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights, and freedoms. If the processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw it at any time without affecting the legitimacy of processing based on consent before withdrawal.

If you have any inquiries or wish to exercise these rights, please contact our Privacy department by sending an email to privacy@farmtrace.com.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Thus, we advise you to review this page periodically for any changes. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. These changes are effective immediately, after they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us by email via privacy@farmtrace.com.