USDA collects some basic agroforestry data in its Census of Agriculture, but the agency announced a new National Agroforestry Survey. The goal is to gather information on five forestry practices. For the first time ever, farmers, ranchers, and ag producers of all kinds will have the opportunity to share the dynamic ways they manage valuable agroforestry resources in detail. Joe Parsons, director of the methodology division and chair of the agricultural Statistics Board talks about the new agroforestry survey.

“It’s a multi-agency effort to try to quantify five agroforestry practices that are often used by ag producers for conservation on their farms and ranches. The Census of Agriculture asked one screening question just to see if folks might use one of these types of agroforestry practices. And this effort dives a little bit deeper into these five agroforestry practices, which includes windbreak, silvopasture, riparian forest buffers, alley cropping, as well as forest farming and multi-story cropping. So, it dives a little bit deeper into those practices and sort of how they work for farms and farmers and how folks manage those in their operations.”

Dr. Matthew Smith is a research program lead with the U.S. Forest Service.

“This particular survey is being sent to a subset of the respondents who said yes to practicing agroforestry in the 2017 Census of Agriculture and it's a random sample because agroforestry systems are so incredibly diverse. So, we're really trying to ensure we have an even representation of all farm sizes, all farm types. Because agroforestry systems are so diverse, we really need a strong response rate to really successfully characterize these systems. We want to hear from producers what didn't work and how you overcame these challenges. Ultimately, when they synthesize that information, we hope that's going to be useful to not only those folks that have agroforestry systems now, but for those that may consider using one of these integrated systems in the future.”

Parsons said the survey is not a large investment of time for participants.

“It was a cooperative effort with the National Agroforestry Center, which is a partnership between USDA’s Forest Service and the National Resources Conservation Service. They're going to take a deeper dive into these data once we have them collected. There will be a series of research reports and really diving into the data and making sense of it to give advice to those that would make policy or look at how to effect conservation policy. If you had all five agroforestry practices, which would be really, really unlikely, it should take no more than 50 minutes, and, of course, if you only have one or two practices, it will take far less.”

Smith noted there are a variety of ways you can respond to the survey.

“I think that's completely up to the respondent. The two options are a mail survey, and folks have already received their packages, and there's also an online version and so really, however folks want to fill it out. If they're more comfortable with the hardcopy, by all means, fill out the hardcopy and send it back in. And if you're more familiar and more comfortable with a web-based platform, there's that option as well. And we'll also be contacting a few folks on a limited basis via phone.”

For more information on the survey, producers can visit NASS' Website.

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