WASHINGTON—Farmers taking a break from the heat can maximize their downtime with a visit to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s online questionnaire demonstration site for the 2017 Census of Agriculture.

The site and other census-related resources are available at agcensus.usda.gov. The updated census questionnaire will go live in late fall and will be accessible on desktop computers and mobile devices. New features can help save time by calculating totals automatically and skipping questions that do not pertain to a respondent’s farm.

Printed surveys for the 2017 Census of Agriculture will be mailed to farmers at the end of this year. The census is conducted every five years and is a complete count of all U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them. It highlights land use and ownership, operator characteristics, production practices, income and expenditures and other topics.