Agricultural census
An agricultural census is an undertaking for collecting, processing, and disseminating data on all farms and farmers in a country.
It is carried out every 10 years, as advised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). The 2020 round was conducted under the world programme for the census of agriculture. The decennial agricultural census is complemented by additional data collections organised every 3-4 years.
Data was collected on the following aspects:
- general characteristics of the farm and the farmer
- land
- livestock
- labour force
- animal housing and manure management
- rural development support measures
For each of these broad aspects, a large amount of data was collected. For example, information on the size of farms, the number of people working on farms, their age and gender, the level of training attained by farm managers, places available in animal housing, and information on manure management.
The census 2020 had a new structure. It consisted of a core set of data and data on modules referring to more specific areas. The core set of data was collected from all farms, while the modules refer to data from a representative sample of farms.
Eurostat started publishing the results of the 2020 agricultural census in the second half of 2022 and will continue to release data during 2023.
The census data refers to the year 2020, with the exception of Portugal, where data refer to 2019.
If available, a link to the agriculture census webpage has been added to the country name in the table.
Land | Start date | End date |
---|---|---|
Belgien | 10-2020 | 05-2021 |
Bulgarien | 09-2020 | 04-2021 |
Czechia | 09-2020 | 02-2021 |
Dänemark | 05-2020 | 01-2021 |
Deutschland | 02-2020 | 05-2020 |
Estland | 09-2020 | 01-2021 |
Irland | 09-2020 | 04-2021 |
Griechenland | 03-2021 | 06-2021 |
Spanien | 10-2020 | 03-2021 |
Frankreich | 10-2020 | 05-2021 |
Kroatien | 06-2020 | 11-2020 |
Italien | 01-2021 | 06-2021 |
Zypern | 09-2020 | 05-2021 |
Lettland | 04-2020 | 01-2021 |
Litauen | 08-2020 | 12-2020 |
Luxemburg | 04-2020 | 05-2020 |
Ungarn | 06-2020 | 11-2020 |
Malta | 10-2020 | 04-2021 |
Niederlande | 03-2020 | 06-2020 |
Österreich | 03-2020 | 01-2021 |
Polen | 09-2020 | 11-2020 |
Portugal | 08-2019 | 11-2020 |
Rumänien | 05-2021 | 07-2021 |
Slowenien | 07-2020 | 01-2021 |
Slowakei | 10-2020 | 05-2021 |
Finnland | 12-2020 | 04-2021 |
Schweden | 05-2020 | 11-2020 |
Within the EU, each of the countries collected data about farmers and farms. This meant collecting data on over 9 million farms in the EU in 2020.
EU countries established teams of supervisors and enumerators to conduct the agricultural census. Their work was typically overseen by civil servants from the national statistical offices and the ministry of agriculture. They used all types of collection methods to complete the agricultural census, such as farm registers, administrative sources, and surveys.
For the surveys, enumerators contacted farmers over the internet, by telephone, letter or through face-to-face questioning. By allowing a more extensive use of administrative sources, the overall cost of the census were reduced. At the same time, the burden on farmers was alleviated, as they received questionnaires that are already partially pre-filled.
Eurostat was responsible for issuing the legislation establishing the framework for the EU's agricultural census (see EU regulation 2018/1091 on integrated farm statistics).
Eurostat has received data from each EU country by March 2022. Eurostat's role is:
- to ensure the quality of the data in terms of accuracy, relevance, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility, comparability and coherence
- to anonymise the individual data
- to aggregate data to provide EU totals or averages
- to disseminate the data in its database and analyse the results.
The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed several activities, such as the preparation of collection instruments and training of staff and enumerators and running of the data collection.
Many countries have managed to adapt their ways of working so that they have been able to progress well and provide the data on time. COVID-19 created opportunities to modernise the data collection process and the working methods. For example, several countries use more administrative data sources, on-line, and telephone questionnaires.
Eurostat provides practical guidance for official statisticians and has published a note on minimising the impact of Covid-19 on data quality in the agricultural census.