What is Five Bar Gate?

Farming Research for Farmers, by Farmers

Five Bar Gate was born out of frustration and a fierce belief that farmers deserve better when it comes to research that affects their livelihoods. Like many good ideas, it started from the ground up.

Farmer research used to be buying unreliable cold lists, dialling out to numbers and hoping someone picked up and was the right kind of farmer for the project, and had time to talk.

It took a very long time.

The notion of a farmer panel went back to the early 00's when our founder, and farmer's wife, Jan, started keeping a spreadsheet of farmers happy to take part in research, starting with friends and spiralling out as interest in agri research became more important.

The problem we saw was that farmers were being asked to give up their time to share insights, expertise and experience for free, often with organisations that didn't understand enough to ask the right questions and they didn't always share the findings and the impact the research had.

Traditional research methods weren’t working. Samples were often small or skewed. The data was patchy. It took ages to get the numbers you needed, and despite best intentions, too much research in agriculture felt extractive rather than collaborative.

So we decided to do things differently.

Five Bar Gate is a research community built with farmers, for farmers. We launched it with one clear mission: to create a trusted space where farmers’ views could be heard, valued, and acted upon, and to make sure research in agriculture genuinely reflected the people working the land. We recruit through research projects or events where we meet farmers and they get to know the people behind the research.

We started small, offering paid opportunities to take part in interviews, focus groups, and surveys on the topics that matter; from livestock health and biodiversity to carbon, inputs, technology, and finance. Within our first year, over 400 farmers signed up, in early 2025, we tipped over the 1000 mark.

We named it Five Bar Gate because it’s the traditional way of counting research participants, as well as being a symbolic meeting point between those inside and outside the farm gate.

That’s exactly what we aim to be.

Our difference is simple: we don’t just do research on farmers. We do it with them. And because we’re from farming families ourselves, we know how to ask the right questions - and more importantly, how to listen and question the answers we get.

Whether we’re working with policymakers, agri-tech innovators, or major players in the food and farming supply chain, we make sure the insights we deliver are rooted in real-world experience.

Because when farmers shape the future of agriculture, everyone benefits.