USDA launches satisfaction survey for farmers, ranchers, forestland owners
Photo / Maureen Milliken
The USDA is seeking input from farmers, ranchers and forestland owners on how satisfied they are with the federal department's agencies and services.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a new annual survey of farmers, ranchers and private forestland owners in order to find out where improvements are needed across several areas of government services.
The survey will help USDA understand whether there are issues concerning the Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Risk Management Agency, the department said in a news release.
The USDA is sending the survey to 28,000 producers over the next few weeks, but is also making it available online for any farmer, rancher or forest owner to take.
“We want to hear from our customers so we can learn what we’re doing right and where we’re missing the mark,” said Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey in the release. “Good data is critical to good decision-making. The more responses we receive, the better we can understand what we need to do to improve our services to America’s farmers, ranchers and private forest land owners.”
The survey is part of President Donald Trump's management agenda, which requires high-impact service provider agencies across the federal government, including FSA and NRCS, to conduct annual surveys to measure and respond to areas needing improvement.
“We recognize producers and our staff may be experiencing a lot of change in how they interact with USDA,” said Farm Service Agency Administrator Richard Fordyce. “This is a good time to check in with our customers.”
Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief Matthew Lohr added, “We will use this input to help improve the delivery of our conservation programs as our sister agencies will do for their programs.”
Risk Management Agency Administrator Martin Barbre said, “We’re about our customers. RMA works to provide producers with crop insurance policies that meet their needs and we need to know where we can improve.”
The survey has 20 questions and takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Responses are confidential, and individual responses will be aggregated. The survey will be open for at least six weeks and will be closed once USDA receives a 30% response.
The survey is available at farmers.gov/survey, in both English and Spanish. The USDA will post the results in the fall.
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