March XX, 2015
Dear Sir/Madam,
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is the federal government’s primary agricultural statistics agency. NASS is a non-regulatory agency whose primary mission is to collect and publish summarized data for public use. Farmers, universities, legislators, agri-businesses, lending institutions, grower associations, and many others use NASS data to make informed policy and business decisions.
NASS is preparing to conduct a pilot survey to identify agricultural activities in Baltimore, Maryland. The pilot survey will help determine if the 2012 Census of Agriculture missed any areas of agricultural activities. Community gardens, roof top gardens, honey bee colonies are a few types operations that we want to account for.
Your participation in this survey will help account for urban agriculture in official statistics. Data from this pilot survey will help determine the need for similar surveys in other metropolitan areas around the country. While participation in this pilot survey is voluntary, your response is important to this new effort.
As required by Federal law, Title 7 and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA), your responses are completely confidential. We safeguard the privacy of all respondents, ensuring that no individual operation or producer can be identified. Information gathered is used for statistical purposes only.
NASS staff or field enumerators will collect the data by personal interview. The person conducting the interview will be able to present either their Federal Employee Identification badge or their National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) identification card prior to the start of the interview.
We value your input and look forward to your participation in making the Urban Agriculture Pilot Study a success. To learn more about NASS and surveys we conduct, please visit www.nass.usda.gov/.
Sincerely,
Dr. Linda J. Young
Director of Research and Development Division
| File Type | application/msword |
| Author | ITSC |
| Last Modified By | Hancock, David - NASS |
| File Modified | 2015-03-17 |
| File Created | 2015-03-17 |