Non-substantive Change Request

September 2017

Non-substantive Change Request

(0535-0039) Fruit, Nuts and Specialty Crops - Citrus

As NASS continues to standardize questionnaires, we are moving some surveys away from tabular formats and into formats that rely upon single, standalone questions. This allows the respondent to more easily skip over questions that do not pertain to their operation. In the quarterly Citrus Surveys (California, Texas and Arizona) we added a couple of screening questions to the beginning of the October questionnaire that will identify the sections of the questionnaire that the respondent will need to answer for this production year. (Florida is not in this particular survey, since they collect the same data under a State sponsored survey.)

NASS also included a question on total acres of citrus on each operation to the October questionnaire. If the respondent answered this question along with the acres of bearing age trees, then in the electronic versions of the questionnaires we will carry this information forward for the remainder of that production year. Only if the respondent was inaccessible in October or was a refusal will we ask these questions on any of the follow up quarterly surveys.

Respondents will now be able to report their production numbers in whichever unit (tons, lbs, bins, cartons, boxes, etc.) is most convenient for them. Previously, we only accepted tons.

From initial testing, NASS feels that these non-substantive changes will not increase the average burden minutes on the questionnaires, but may in fact reduce the minutes.