A packet of Winnaz crisps is easy to recognise. The potato value chain behind it is harder to explain: growers, inputs, advice, purchasing, processing and jobs. When Hollanda Fairfoods prepared its 2023 impact report, the task was to make that chain visible without treating every positive account as proof of a universal outcome.
I interviewed participants and shaped the report’s presentation as part of the team. I worked to reach farmers across different groups, because the people easiest to interview are not automatically representative of everyone in a supply chain.
The detail that earns its place
The report includes farmer accounts and headline figures. It also describes its method: a week of fieldwork in Musanze and eleven semi-structured interviews and surveys, including two cooperatives. Crucially, it says the scope was limited and that further investigation would strengthen the findings. That paragraph does not weaken the story. It tells a careful reader what weight to put on the claims.
One participant can explain how a market relationship affected a household decision. A figure can show what the company recorded across a larger group. Those are different kinds of evidence. The temptation in impact writing is to fuse them into one effortless sentence: a programme happened, therefore a life changed. The better approach is to show the connection and its limits.
Make the reader’s questions part of the edit
When I read an impact story now, I ask: Who was interviewed? What happened before and after? Which result came from a company record, which came from a participant’s account, and which remains an interpretation? Can a reader reach the fuller report? The visual presentation should help those distinctions survive a quick read.
This is useful well beyond agrifood. Banks, telcos and development programmes all tell stories about access. An account opened or a service launched is a countable output. Whether a customer could use it reliably, affordably and with confidence is another question. Good communications does not pretend those questions are interchangeable.
What stayed with me from the Hollanda work is an editorial discipline: the strongest impact story gives the audience enough context to believe the part that has been shown and enough honesty to see what still needs to be learned.
