Purpose
The University of Washington, in collaboration with Washington State University and the Washington State Department of Agriculture, developed this survey to identify how the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has affected farmers and ranchers in Washington State. Survey results will help to enhance the resilience of Washington state agriculture to future challenges. More information about the study is available here.
Taking the Survey
This brief online survey will take about 20-30 minutes to complete. Questions will cover: your farm’s status pre-COVID-19, challenges and adaptations that you faced during 2020 due to COVID-19, and hopes and concerns going into 2021. You may wish to have records from 2019 and 2020 on hand to help you answer the questions, but you will not be asked to provide specific numbers.
Compensation
Upon completing the survey, you may choose to provide your email address to enter a drawing for a $50 online gift card (one of six). Entering the drawing is optional and you can participate in the survey without providing this information.
Confidentiality and Anonymity
Taking part in this survey is voluntary. We will NOT ask for your name, protected health information, or any identifying information. We will only ask for your email address if you wish to join the gift card drawing, which will not be used to contact you for any other purpose. You are not required to provide your email address to participate in the survey. All information you provide will be kept confidential. When we publish the results of this survey, we will not use any personal information and the data will be reported in aggregate. To have good quality data, each question requires a response, but also has an opt-out option. If you do not want to answer a specific question while taking the survey, please choose the “Prefer not to answer” option and move on to the next question. You do not need to give us any information you do not want to and can stop participating in the survey at any time.
Benefits of Participating
The information you provide in this survey will form a valuable resource for the agricultural community and decision-makers in understanding how Washington state farmers and ranchers have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope that these survey results will help improve support to WA agriculture, and will furthermore form a basis for enhancing the resilience of Washington state agriculture to future challenges. If you have any questions or concerns, contact us at foodsystems@uw.edu
If you are 18 years or older and a farm owner/operator in Washington state, you are welcome to participate in this survey.