The first internal audit on a farm checks documents, not people or their work. Before checking anything, you write its scope on one page: which documents get checked, against what standard, by whom and on what date. Without that page an audit is too big to begin, and on a farm that has never had one it usually never starts.
On many farms, nobody except the people who keep the records has ever checked them. Nobody has written down what should exist, what is filed and what has gone missing, so a document gets looked for only on the afternoon a buyer, a bank or a government agency asks for it, and that turns into a search through folders while someone waits on the phone. The cost is finding out, at the worst moment and in front of the person who asked, which document the farm cannot produce.
Is the first internal audit a big investigation, or one page you write first?
It starts with one page you write first; checking the documents comes later, on the date written on that page. An audit sounds like a project the size of the whole farm, usually because nobody has written down where it stops. ISO 19011, the international standard on how to run audits, covers planning audits as a program (what gets checked, and when) and “the evaluation of competence of individuals involved in the audit process”. On a farm, that program becomes a few lines on the page: which documents get checked and on what date. The competence requirement becomes one more line: the name of a person able to do the check. Without those lines a first audit has no limits.
Who conducts it, if the farm has no audit department?
Someone who does not keep the records being checked, which is a job you assign, not a department you build. The Institute of Internal Auditors, the professional body for internal auditors, describes internal audit as “independent, objective insight”. On a farm of a few people, independent does not mean hiring anyone. It means the person who fills in the spray records is not the person who checks them. If you are the only one who can check, do it on a set day, apart from the days you fill them in, knowing that this is weaker than a second pair of eyes.
Giving an employee the job of checking does not change who is in charge: the person who checks the records gets no say in farm decisions. If the owner cannot decide, who takes over and who may sign for the farm go in another document, when the farm has one: a written succession plan. It covers who runs the farm, not only who inherits it. For the audit, that plan is one more document to check: that it exists and is current.
What does the audit check, the work or the documents?
The documents, and never a person. Each document is checked against a standard the farm already has in writing: the service interval in the equipment manual, the date on the product label, the expiry of a license and, if the farm has them, a code of conduct people signed or a written rule on which decisions take more than one signature.
For each document you confirm three things: it exists, it is current, and what is written in it matches the standard. Whether it is current is a question of dates, and if the farm keeps a compliance calendar, the list of each license and obligation with its due date, the dates are already there. Nobody’s job performance gets graded.
That is also where the audit stops. A folder can be complete and current while the field those records are about was managed badly, because what you check is the paper, not the work. Checking the paper still matters: it is how you show buyers, banks and agencies that the farm does what it promised in writing, and that is part of farm management as much as the work in the field. Articles on other written commitments of that kind are in this site’s sustainability section.
How do you keep the first one from being too big to start?
Limit it to the smallest set of documents that answers a question someone has already asked you. FAO’s SAFA guidelines, written for assessing sustainability on farms and food businesses, face the same problem: they call setting the scope “one of the most difficult steps” and accept an assessment “limited to a single production site or step of the supply chain with clear documented justification”. For a first internal audit, that smallest set is the documents a buyer, a bank or an inspector has already asked for once, because their absence has already cost something.
The same documents can also serve a second request. Some buyers now ask for an ESG report: a one-page summary of the farm’s environmental, social and governance (how the farm is run) numbers. The documents a buyer has already asked for can feed into that report, so if you check them in this audit, they are ready when a buyer asks for the report. How to write one is covered in a separate article, a first ESG report from what you already measure.
| Reference | What it covers | What it adds to the page |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 19011 (international standard) | planning audits in advance | a written plan of what gets checked and when, and a competent person to carry it out |
| The Institute of Internal Auditors | who checks | independence: the checker does not keep those records |
| FAO SAFA Guidelines | how far the first review goes | a limited scope: one part of the farm, with the reason written down, not the whole farm |
What turns the audit into a fix, not just a list of gaps?
Each gap written down as a finding, with a correction that has a name and a date. If a first audit ends with a list of what is missing and stops there, all you learned is where things stood. If it ends with one line per gap, naming who fixes it and by when, each gap has an owner and a deadline. A study in a Colombian accounting journal looked at internal audit in local governments in Ecuador, not on farms, but it reaches the same point: the review should be periodic and lead to corrective action on what the audit finds, taken promptly.
That is why you write a second date into the scope on purpose: not only the day of this audit, but the day of the next. Checking once, you see where things stood that day; checking on a set date, for example once a year, you see whether the fixes held.
Where to start
One page, one small slice, and about an afternoon with whoever keeps the documents to decide the scope and fill it in; the check itself comes later, on the date you set. Keep a copy where whoever does the next audit will look for it.
An audit sounds like a verdict on the farm, but in the first one you only check documents the farm already has, on a date you set, with a named person doing the checking. The written scope is useful whether the management was good or bad. A buyer, a bank or an inspector usually asks for a specific document, not for the farm’s word that its records are fine, and once the scope is written and checked in a quiet week, you know which ones you can hand over.