This Cookie Policy explains which cookies agmark.org uses, what each one does, how long it lasts, and how you can control or refuse them. The short version: nothing optional is set unless you accept it, and you can change your mind at any time from the "Cookie Settings" control in our footer. Read this alongside our Privacy Policy, which covers how we handle personal data more generally.
What Cookies Are
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store, so something can be remembered between page loads or between visits: that you are signed in, which language you prefer, or that you have already dismissed a notice. Cookies cannot run programs, install anything, or read other files on your device.
A cookie is called first-party when the site you are visiting sets it, and third-party when it is set by another domain whose content the page has loaded. Both kinds are covered below.
Cookies We Currently Use
agmark.org uses Google Analytics 4 to measure how visitors use the Site, but only if you accept cookies when asked. Until you do, it is not loaded and neither of the cookies below exists. Once you accept, it sets two first-party cookies.
"_ga" tells one visitor's browser apart from another's between sessions. It expires roughly 2 years after it is set or last updated.
"_ga_PK2V687125" holds Google Analytics 4 session state for our particular property, such as whether a visit counts as a continuation of the same session. It expires roughly 2 years after it is set or last updated.
Neither cookie identifies you by name. Google Analytics 4 does not store your IP address in the reports we see: it uses the address to work out an approximate location, then discards it. We do not use this data for advertising and do not share it with anyone for their own marketing purposes. Our Privacy Policy has the fuller explanation.
Apart from those two, agmark.org sets no cookies of its own. There is no login, no comment system and no advertising script, and our own fonts are served from our server rather than from a third-party font service.
We do store two things regardless of what you choose, and neither is a cookie. Your answer to the cookie banner is kept in your browser's local storage under "agmark.cookie-consent.v2", alongside the date you gave it, so we do not ask again on every page. And if you press "Show map" on the Contact page, we note that in your browser's session storage so the map stays open while you move around the Site; that note is discarded when you close the tab. Neither leaves your browser or is sent to us or to anyone else. Clearing your browsing data removes both, and the banner will simply ask again.
Cookies Set by the Google Map
Our Contact page can show a Google map of AGMARK's Nairobi office. When that map loads, it loads from Google's servers, along with the tiles, fonts and scripts it needs to draw itself, and Google may set its own third-party cookies in your browser at that point. Those are Google's cookies rather than ours: we cannot read them, and their use is governed by Google's privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy).
Because of that, the map does not load on its own. Unless you have accepted cookies, the Contact page shows a placeholder where the map would be, and nothing is requested from Google until you press "Show map". Doing so loads it for that visit only and does not change your analytics choice, so you can look up directions without agreeing to be measured.
On every other page of the Site the map is never requested at all, whatever you have chosen. Our address, phone number, and email address are printed as text beside it, so the map itself is the only thing you lose by leaving it closed.
How We Handle Consent
On your first visit, a banner asks whether you accept cookies. Nothing optional runs before you answer: Google Analytics is not loaded, no analytics cookie is set, and the Google map on the Contact page stays closed. That is the whole point of asking first rather than afterwards.
There are two buttons, "Accept" and "Reject", side by side and the same size. Rejecting takes exactly one click, the same as accepting, and costs you nothing on this Site: every page, form, and download behaves identically either way. We do not ask again after you have answered, and we do not treat continuing to browse, or scrolling, as agreement.
You can change your answer whenever you like through the "Cookie Settings" control in the footer of every page. Switching from accept to reject stops the measurement immediately and deletes the Google Analytics cookies already on your device, rather than merely leaving them to expire.
The banner is shown to everyone rather than only to visitors covered by the European Union's rules. It is simpler to explain, and we would rather offer the same choice to a farmer in Nakuru as to a funder in Brussels.
If we later add anything that needs consent under Kenyan law or another law that applies to you, it will be added to this page first, and it will not run until you have agreed to it.
Third-Party Sites and Cookies
Pages on this Site link out to AGMARK's profiles on Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and to funder, partner, and news websites. These are ordinary links, so nothing loads from those sites while you are on ours and none of them can set a cookie until you click through.
Once you are on one of those sites, its own cookie and privacy policies apply, and we have no control over what it sets or what it does with it.
Managing Cookies in Your Browser
Every major browser lets you see which cookies have been stored, delete them, and block new ones, either across the board or site by site. Blocking all cookies will stop the Google Analytics cookies described here; blocking third-party cookies will stop the ones the Google map can set.
The instructions for each browser are here: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
Nothing on agmark.org depends on cookies to work. If you block all of them, every page, form, and download still functions normally.
Opting Out of Google Analytics
To stop Google Analytics measuring you on every site you visit rather than just this one, Google publishes a browser add-on that does exactly that: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. It is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera.
Most browsers also offer a "Do Not Track" setting. Because no industry-wide standard was ever agreed for how sites should respond to it, we do not change our behaviour based on that signal. The controls above do work.
What Could Change This
If we add a tool that needs cookies we do not currently set, a live chat widget, a video embed, or anything to do with advertising or retargeting for instance, we will update this page before it goes live and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before any non-essential cookie is set.
Changes to This Cookie Policy
We update this page, and the "Last updated" date at the top of it, whenever what is written here stops matching what the Site actually does.
