The census of agriculture started with large farms in December 2015. We're working on the collection of the census from that point through to September. A lot of the contact with the farms will occur during the May-June period largely because in order to save money we're piggybacking on the operations of the census of population to make the whole operation more efficient. We're well aware this is difficult for some farmers, particularly during seeding periods, and there's a fair bit of flexibility for the responses to come back from the farms. As I indicated, we'll be in the field until September to collect them.
In terms of the content of the census, the struggle in statistics is always between continuities: you have the same information available and you can look for trends over time and new issues that need to be addressed. There are slightly fewer questions in the census of agriculture this time because we intended to obtain some of the information through administrative data. There will be some additional questions looking at issues of current concern. Organic farming and deployment of technology, for example, are where we would be looking for additional content. This time we hope to persuade the largest possible number of farm operators to respond via Internet.
One of the advantages of responding via Internet is that, based on the type of farm, it jumps you past a whole bunch of questions you don't have to answer. It guides you through the questionnaire as opposed to a paper questionnaire, where you wind up looking at every question and trying to decide whether or not it applies to you. We started that process in the last census. We're hoping that more and more farmers will adopt that response channel, and the result will be a reduction in the perception of burden as a result of the census of agriculture.