Fruits and Vegetables Survey (FV)

Detailed information for 2025

This survey collects data to provide estimates of the total cultivated area, harvested area, total production, marketed production and farm gate value of selected fruits and vegetables grown in Canada.

• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

This survey collects data to provide estimates of the total cultivated area, harvested area, total production, marketed production and farm gate value of selected fruits and vegetables grown in Canada. The data are used by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, other federal departments, provincial organizations and related industries for production and price analysis, and for development of agricultural policies and programs.

Reference period: One year

Collection period: End of October to mid December

Subjects

• Agriculture and food (formerly Agriculture)
• Crops and horticulture
• Food and nutrition

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The target population is all farms in the ten provinces of Canada that grow fruit and/or vegetables for sale. The Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are excluded from the survey as well as institutional farms and community pastures. Also excluded are farms producing only mushrooms, farms producing only greenhouse vegetables, and farms producing only potatoes.

The observed population consists of those establishments in the target population which have been identified as having fruit or vegetable production on Statistics Canada's Business Register.

Instrument design

The questionnaires were developed by subject matter experts through consultation with the provinces and industry experts. The Operations and Integration Division and the Agriculture Commodities Section of the Collection, Planning and Research Division and the Enterprise Statistics Division of Statistics Canada conduct in-house testing for flow and consistency.

Subject matter experts may change, add or remove questions. This typically happens because of changes in market trends or because of information in debriefing reports from field staff.

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

This is a stratified sample survey of farms with either fruit or vegetable products with a cross-sectional design.

Sampling unit:
The sampling unit is the establishment.

Stratification method:
For each province, small operations that have a total fruit acreage smaller than a provincial threshold for total fruit and have a vegetable acreage smaller than a threshold for total vegetables are excluded from the sample (Take-None); these thresholds are set so that all farms with greater acreage than either threshold together represent 95% of fruit and vegetable acreage in the province. In each province, a threshold for fruit acreage and another for vegetable acreage was defined using the sigma-gap method, based on the importance of that commodity to the provincial or national totals. All operations with acreage above the threshold were selected in the sample (Take-All). The remaining units were firstly divided into fruit or vegetable strata and then, the Cumulative Root F Rule was used to divide the strata into 2 groups based on acreage, the large and medium-sized Take-Some. A random sample was selected among the operations in each Take-Some stratum. For each stratum, a minimum sample size was set to ensure a maximum design weight of two.

Overall, the sample size was determined in order to achieve a target CV of around 0.01 (1%) for total fruit area and total vegetable area at the provincial level.

Sampling and sub-sampling:
A sample was selected by stratified random sampling.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2025-10-31 to 2025-12-15

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Data are collected annually using an e-mail invitation to open, complete and submit an electronic questionnaire. If the questionnaire is not completed on-line by the deadline, the respondent will be contacted for a scheduled telephone interview.

In Quebec, aggregated data was extracted from the Bio Québec website dissemination data for the Conseil des appellations réservées et des termes valorisants (CARTV).

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .