<p>In 2023, a mail survey was conducted with Midwestern agricultural producers/landowners as part of the USDA-NIFA Sustainable Agriculture Systems funded Diverse Corn Belt project (https://diversecornbelt.org/). The purpose of the survey was to measure perceptions and attitudes of agricultural producers/landowners about barriers and opportunities of agricultural diversification in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa.</p>
<p>A stratified sample of agricultural producer/landowner addresses was purchased from DTN (https://www.dtn.com/) based on proportional representation by state, produced crop/livestock type, and farm size. Surveys were mailed to 3,300 producers/landowners in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. A total of 1053 responses were received with 725 agricultural producers/landowners completing the survey for a response rate of 23%.</p>
<p>This publication includes one Excel file data file and PDF files containing the survey code book, the survey questionnaire used to collect the data, survey design and sampling strategy, and the Purdue University Natural Resources Social Science Lab's Standard Operating Procedure for survey development, distribution, and management. The Excel data file contains three data worksheets including: (1) 1058 lines of raw, cleaned, unidentifiable data collected from the 2023 survey respondents showing QUAL columns for data transparency, two surveys with no responses, and three surveys categorized as "missing" due to noted data entry error and re-entry of data; (2) a modified version of the respondent data for analysis (this includes 725 lines of data due to removal of surveys with no responses, missing surveys, and response categories of "refusal" and "bad address"); and (3) the metadata.</p>
<p>Support for this research was provided by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Sustainable Agriculture Systems Award Number 2021-68012-35896, project titled "DiverseCornBelt: Enhancing rural resilience through landscape diversity in the Midwest".</p>