The questionnaire arrived from your buyer—maybe a retailer, a food processor, or your cooperative. Perhaps through email with a spreadsheet attached, perhaps as an invitation to register on a platform you've never heard of. It asks about carbon emissions, water use, biodiversity measures, seasonal worker conditions, and policies you may or may not have written down.
You've successfully run your farm for years—or decades—without any of this. Now a buyer you depend on is asking for information that feels completely outside your expertise. Where do you even begin?
This guide is for agricultural operations encountering ESG requests for the first time. No sustainability background required. No judgment about why you haven't done this before. Just a practical starting point.
First, Don't Panic
The urgency you feel is manufactured by unfamiliarity, not by actual complexity. ESG questionnaires look intimidating because they use jargon and cover topics outside your usual operations. But the underlying requests are mostly straightforward:
- How much diesel, electricity, and heating fuel do you use?
- What inputs go onto your land (fertilizer, pesticides)?
- How do you manage water, waste, and biodiversity?
- How do you treat your workers, including seasonal staff?
- What policies and certifications guide your operations?
You have answers to these questions. They just need to be organized and formatted in ways you've never been asked to provide before.
Thousands of farms are receiving these requests for the first time this year. The buyers sending them know their supply chains include operations at every stage of ESG maturity. They're not expecting perfection from a first response. They're expecting a good-faith effort to provide what you can.
Understand Why This Is Happening
Buyer ESG requests aren't random. They're driven by regulation—specifically the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires large companies to disclose detailed sustainability data including their supply chain's environmental impact.
Your buyer isn't asking because they've suddenly become passionate about sustainability. They're asking because regulators require them to report Scope 3 emissions—the carbon footprint of everything they source. Your farm is part of what they source. They need your data to complete their compliance obligations.
This context matters because it tells you what buyers actually need: data they can use in their own reports. Not marketing language about your commitment to the land. Not vague aspirations. Concrete information they can plug into their disclosures.
The Three-Step First Response
Step 1: Review the Questionnaire (1-2 hours)
Before gathering data, understand what's being asked. Read through the entire questionnaire without trying to answer anything. Note:
- What topics does it cover? (Environmental only? Social too? Governance?)
- What format are answers expected in? (Multiple choice? Numbers? Document uploads?)
- What's the deadline?
- What's mandatory versus optional?
- What questions genuinely don't apply to your operation?
Many questionnaires include sections that don't apply to every farm. A crop farm won't have livestock methane data. A pastoral operation won't have pesticide application records. A small holding won't have complex supply chain data. Identifying what's not applicable saves time chasing data you don't need.
Step 2: Gather What You Already Have (1-2 weeks)
Most ESG data already exists somewhere on your farm. The challenge is knowing where to look.
For environmental questions:
- Electricity bills show energy consumption (check with your accountant)
- Fuel receipts show diesel use for tractors and machinery (your fuel supplier or farm accounts)
- Fertilizer invoices show application rates and nitrogen content (your agronomist or supplier records)
- Spray records document pesticide use (required by law in most jurisdictions)
- Water extraction license shows abstraction volumes (if you irrigate)
- Livestock movement records show herd/flock numbers (required for traceability)
- Soil test results show organic matter and nutrient levels (from your agronomist)
- Farm assurance audit reports cover many environmental practices
For social questions:
- Payroll records have employee counts, including seasonal workers
- Farm safety logs have incident and near-miss records
- Training certificates show sprayer qualifications (PA1/PA2), chainsaw, first aid
- Existing farm safety policy covers most workforce practice questions
For governance questions:
- Farm assurance membership (Red Tractor, LEAF, QMS) covers quality and standards
- Organic certification documentation if applicable
- Environmental stewardship agreements show conservation commitments
- Food safety certifications (SALSA, GlobalG.A.P.)
Don't create documents you don't have. If the questionnaire asks for a formal environmental policy and you don't have one, the honest answer is “No, we don't have a formal environmental policy.” That's a legitimate response for a farm new to ESG reporting.
Step 3: Complete and Submit (2-4 hours)
With data gathered, work through the questionnaire systematically:
For quantitative questions: Enter the numbers you've gathered. Note your methodology if there's space. Indicate what's measured versus estimated.
For text questions: Keep answers factual and specific. “We track diesel consumption monthly through fuel delivery records and maintain spray logs for all pesticide applications” beats “We are committed to environmental stewardship.”
For questions you can't answer: Use “Not applicable” for genuinely irrelevant questions. For questions where you lack data, note that you don't currently track this metric. Leaving fields blank with no explanation is worse than explaining why you can't answer.