A University of Waterloo study interested in helping farmers by improving programs for the implementation of best management practices and overcoming barriers to adoption. Survey participants are needed.

We are interested in helping farmers with the implementation of best management practices. We focus on windbreaks, buffer strips/riparian buffers and farm woodlots. Best management practices such as these can provide on- and off-farm benefits such as increased water quality, reduced soil erosion, improved crop harvest, lower livestock morbidity, more wildlife habitat, and reduced building energy use. Previous work by Statistics Canada suggests that best management practices are not applied as frequently as they could be. We want to find out why this is the case and hope that our findings will help supporting better policies and programs that can support farmers in implementing best management practices.

We acknowledge that in addition to windbreaks, buffer strips/riparian buffers and farm woodlots, there are many other best management practices. But these three best management practices are useful for our study, because we can observe them from a distance. This will help us later in the study when we are going to measure actual landscape changes with recent and historic satellite images or aerial photography.

Here is the link to the online survey: https://uwaterloo.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_djzyecIsvf55bVk