Sample survey of agriculture and forestry

Agricultural holding: All agricultural area operated by the same holder belongs to the same holding regardless of whether it includes several land numbers, title numbers and lease numbers.

Holder(s): The person(s) who is responsible for farming it.

Agricultural area in use: Comprises all owned and rented agricultural area in use at the holding, including fields that lie fallow a year. Agricultural areas include cultivated and surface-cultivated land, and other fertilized pastures.

Supplementary industry: An activity that uses the land, buildings or machinery belonging to the holding.

Gross income: The sum of all incomes excluded value added tax, and not deducted any costs.

County where the holding is located, size of holding expressed in decares of utilized agricultural area and type of farming of the holding.

Name: Sample survey of agriculture and forestry
Topic: Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing

Division for Housing, Property, Spatial and Agricultural Statistics

Part of the country.

Annual

Data are delivered to Eurostat by agreement.

Reviewed and edited microdata are stored.

The purpose of the Survey of Agriculture is to obtain relevant data not found in administrative data systems, and to obtain data for units not covered by administrative systems.

The Survey of Agriculture is designed to form a picture of the agriculture industry in Norway (the number of holdings and properties) through various questions. The questions vary from year to year (labour, liabilities, investments, fixed assets, rental of agricultural land, farm buildings, extended forest survey etc.).

Data from the survey are used by professional organizations, the Budget Committee for Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Ministry of Environment, various research institutions such as the Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute and the Division for Environmental Statistics at Statistics Norway.

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 10 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given inthe Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.

Not relevant

Statistics Act Section 2-1, 2-2, 2-3

Not relevant

The population is active holdings registered in the administrative Farm Register of the Norwegian Agricultural Authority, and covers all units that meet one or more conditions relating to minimum operating standards. An example of such conditions is that a holding must have at least 5 decares of agricultural area in use.

The majority of the data comes directly from respondents who fill out forms for the annual agricultural survey. The Agricultural Register provides information on the size of the agricultural and forest area, persons associated with the property/holding and what their association is with the property/holding.

Each year a sample is drawn from the Farm Register for the Survey of Agriculture. The size of the sample varies between 10 000 and 12 000 active holdings, stratified by the size of estimated standard output  and type of production in each county. Until 2011 the size of the agricultural area was used in stead of standard output.

Letters are sent to the holdings drawn for inclusion in the survey. The owner or holder of the property provides the data.

A number of controls and corrections are done to ensure consistency both on a single form and between forms and available register information.

The sample is stratified by location, standard output and farm type.

Not relevant

Figures based on few units (holdings) are not published if this causes risk for identifying any of the units concerned, or the results are considered to be all too uncertain for giving estimates.

The statistics are basically comparable back to the end of 1940th. However, for some variables there will be a break e.g. between 1998 and 1999. The reason for this is that the method used for estimating the number of holdings from 1990 to 1998 gradually led to too high figures. This was evidently shown by the results of the complete census of agriculture for 1999.

In 2007, the question related to supplementary industries was expanded. In addition to ticking off for relevant industry, the respondents were asked to fill in the corresponding gross income. This modification may have caused a somewhat higher item non-response.

Primary data are obtained from the forms filled out by the respondents. They may contain errors made by the individual respondents when he or she filled out the form. A number of errors are discovered and corrected by those who go through forms during the revision process at Statistics Norway.

A number of errors during the collection and processing of the data are unavoidable and include errors that occur during revision, data processing errors etc. Extensive work has been carried out to reduce these errors as much as possible.

Non-response in the survey is due to the failure of individual respondents to deliver questionnaires or that a property has been sold or is no longer farmed as an independent unit.

Variance: All sample surveys will be encumbered by a certain amount of uncertainty. Generally, the fewer the observations are, the more uncertain the results. Groups based on few observations will be particularly sensitive to extreme values, i.e. values that deviate considerably from the average. Such extreme values are consequently assigned a weight equal to 1, so that they only represent themselves in the material.

Bias: All types of holdings are included in the Survey of Agriculture sample. To provide a better representation in certain counties with few holdings a higher percentage of holdings are selected in these areas.

Frame errors: The quality of the register basis from which the sample is selected also has an impact on the quality of the final result.

Not relevant