A FARMING charity has launched its Big Farming Survey on January 11, with the survey running until March 31.

The aim of RABI is to collect more than 26,000 replies in order to obtain a balanced response from a cross-section of the farming community.

It is hoped that as many members of the farming community as possible, including owner-occupier farmers, tenant farmers, farmworkers, spouses and adult-aged children, will complete this survey about the health and well-being of the agricultural community in England and Wales.

The charity says that farming people are facing increasingly complex and wide-ranging challenges that can often have a negative impact on their health and wellbeing.

The full extent of how these pressures are affecting the agricultural community is not yet entirely known or defined.

In response, RABI has commissioned an unprecedented research project in collaboration with the University of Exeter.

The research aims to deliver invaluable insight into the challenges that a generation of farming people face and improve our understanding of how farming today is impacting physical and mental wellbeing, in addition to the health of farm businesses.

While commissioned by RABI, key findings from the survey will be published in the autumn with free access to the findings report made available to sector partners.

The data collected will enable RABI to work with their partners to understand how they can develop their services to empower farming people to overcome challenges, and increase farmer resilience now and into the future.

The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete and is available online, as a hard copy in farming magazines or can be requested to be posted out.

The survey is available at www.rabi.org.uk/bigfarmingsurvey or the online version is at ex.ac.uk/BigFarmingSurvey. To request a printed copy, email farmsurvey@exeter.ac.uk.