StatsCan is seeking information on environmental stewardship on farms.Ottawa—Farmers across Canada have or soon will be receiving an invitation from Statistics Canada to participate in a survey about the environmental stewardship practices they have adopted for their farms.Statistics Canada uses the Farm Management Survey to gather key information about livestock and crop operations with a specific interest in the production of dairy, beef, poultry, pig, field crops, forage crops and vegetable, fruit, berry and nut crops.The federal agency says that for farmers who have been impacted by severe weather, it will adjust survey collection as necessary while ensuring quality national-level data.“Every day, farmers across Canada innovate and find new ways to efficiently manage their operations with environmental stewardship in mind. That is why collecting data that reflects current farming practices is so important. New information on farm management allows government to create policies and programs to support farmers, and helps further Canada's sustainability goals.”StatsCan says it prefers to contact farmers about the survey through e-mail but if the agency doesn't have an email address, it will be regular mail. The survey contains an introductory text and a link to access and fill the electronic questionnaire. The mailed letter contain the instructions on how to fill out the survey online.In cases where respondents do not answer within 2 weeks or do not have a computer readily available, interviewers then call them and fill the questionnaires with them on the phone, StatsCan said.The questionnaire length depends on the type of farm production respondents are asked to fill the survey for.. Each of the farm production types have largely different questions asked by the survey. The longest time requirement is about 40 minutes but it is often shorter.The Farm Management Survey is done every 5 years as a follow up to the Census of Agriculture from which the sample composed of 18 000 farms is drawn. The contact information and farm characteristics used to identify who should receive the survey is drawn from the census of agriculture. The survey takes into account the region, size and type of farm production, pulled from answers from census, in order to select respondents. The selected sample is built to be representative of 90 per cent of the national production for the seven agricultural activities described before.