Consultation Survey FSA 3.0 Questionnaire

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback to the Draft FSA 3.0 Questionnaire. You can save answers and change them later, or complete part of the survey now and finish it later in the 60-day consultation period. You can download a PDF version of this survey here. SAI Platform will only accept feedback through the online consultation survey.

About the FSA 3.0 Questionnaire

The FSA Questionnaire provides useful insight to both individual farmers and farm group managers about on-farm sustainability practices. The FSA 3.0 Questionnaire will enable users to identify areas of strength as well as potential areas to improve performance and track improvement over time. Results can then be verified through third-party verification assessment, allowing for public performance level claims at bronze, silver and gold level.

The purpose of the latest FSA 3.0 will be to “drive relevant and demonstrable continuous improvement of on-farm social, environmental and business performance through supply chain engagement and fostering common understanding.” (FSA 3.0 Guidance Committee, 2019).

The FSA 3.0 Guidance Committee will also develop new tools to complement the FSA 3.0 Questionnaire. The Committee recognises that the purpose of FSA 3.0 requires new tools to help users set priorities, create continuous improvement and measure sustainability outcomes. These new tools fall outside the scope of this public consultation. SAI Platform will use focus group discussions and expert interviews to gather feedback on these new additions to the FSA.

Please email SAI Platform in case of any questions.

This first section is about you. It is important for SAI Platform to know who is providing feedback and what perspective you take to the Farm Sustainability Assessment.

Thank you for letting us know who you are.

The following section allows you to provide general feedback on the Draft FSA 3.0 Questionnaire. The purpose of the FSA 3.0 Questionaire is to:

• Enable self-assessment of sustainability practices at farm level to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement
• Establish the farm sustainability performance level (bronze, silver, gold) as the basis for a public performance claim. Making a public claim requires an independent third-party verification assessment.
• Serve as a benchmark reference for other agricultural sustainability standards and systems.

The questions in the FSA 3.0 Questionnaire should be as self-explaning as possible. However, if you feel you need more background to answer the survey questions below, you can find limited guidance in the FSA 3.0 Questionnaire and more in-depth guidance in the FSA Topic Guides. You can also download the draft FSA 3.0 Plant Protection Product List that is referenced in the Draft SFA 3.0 Questionnaire.

It is clear that the answers to the survey questions may differ significantly depending on the farm profile that you have in mind while answering them. This is inevitable for a questionnaire that applies to all crop farming everywhere. Please take the profile of the farms in mind that is most relevant to your opertions when you answer the questions.

The draft FSA 3.0 Questionnaire has 10 Topic Areas:

1. Farm Management and Community
2. Plant Material Selection and Propagation
3. Soil Management
4. Nutrient Management
5. Crop Protection
6. Waste Management
7. Water Management
8. Biodiversity
9. Air Quality and Emissions
10. Labour Conditions

The following questions are about the content of the draft FSA 3.0 Questionnaire.

FSA Questionnaire v3.0 contains 102 questions. The downloadable draft questionnaire is built up as follows:

Column A            FSA v3.0 question number (102 questions in total, including 17 new ones)
Column B            Relevant FSA v2.1 question number
Column C            Topic
Column D            Relevant UN Sustainability Development Goal (SDG)
Column E            FSA 3.0 Question
Column F            Level (Essential, Basic, Advanced)
Column G           N/A option for question (yes, no)
Column H           Guidance Notes (limited to pre-filled options only)

 Some other features to note:

• Text in blue will be described in a glossary in greater detail
• To avoid repeating questions during the audit which are not relevant, questions have been grouped together.  Where applicable, there is a pre-fill question.  If the section of questions is not applicable, the entire section can be pre-filled, allowing the auditor to swiftly move on to the subsequent topic or sub-topic
• Questions which start with ‘where applicable’ are the only standalone questions with a N/A option

The FSA 3.0 Quesionnaire has three types of questions: essential, basic and advanced.

Depending on the percentage of questions that are answered with 'yes', a farm can achieve one of three levels of performance: bronze, silver, and gold.

The following figure explains what the performance levels mean, and how they can be achieved.

Thank you for your general feedback. We will present the outcomes of this survey to all respondents, and will let you know which actions were undertaken as a result of them.

We also offer repondents the possibility to provide detailed feedback on the draft FSA 3.0 Questionnaire  at topic level and at question level. You can do this by using the FSA 3.0 Questionnaire Feedback Form. When you are finished, please upload the document below. For data management purposes, SAI Platform will only take uploads in the original FSA 3.0 Questionnaire Feedback Form format into account.