# Presentation: 517221

## Establishing a survey frame for agriculture:The New Zealand experience 

**Andrew Hunter**
**Manager Business, Financial & Structural Statistics**
**Statistics New Zealand **

## Agriculture Statistics in New Zealand

**First recorded data – 1861**
**Annual survey or census most years to 1996**
**Survey programme ceased in 1996 - consequence of reduced Statistics NZ funding**
**1997/98 - review of agriculture statistics by Statistics NZ **
**1999 – Survey of livestock & cropping**
**2000 – Horticulture Census**
**2001 new baseline funding – Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry *****"... to develop an ongoing programme to collect agricultural statistics in partnership with Statistics New Zealand"***** **
**2002 – Agriculture Production Census**

## Establishing a suitable frame

**2001 – Joint review of potential frames conducted by SNZ & MAF**
**Four options**
***AgriBase (AgriQuality NZ Ltd)***
*As a land-based register, is conceptually more suitable and has good coverage of livestock farms*
***Business Frame (BF) -  Statistics NZ***
*Tax based, good coverage of tax entities, limited maintenance at time*
***Combining the BF and AgriBase ***
***BF supplemented by other farm lists (AgriBase, MAF Forest Listing, the 2000 Hort Survey Population, etc)***
**None suitable due to factors such as cost & time required to update, low match rates between lists and coverage concerns**

## The immediate solution – option 5

**Inland Revenue Department’s GST Client Register to form the foundation, supported by BF maintenance**
**Coverage supplemented using:**
***other IRD data to identify farming businesses that were non-GST registered; and ***
***other farming lists used to update contact details where possible (e.g. AgriBase, National Exotic Forest Description, the 2000 Horticulture Census Population) ***
**Assumptions**
***Tax system is the most up-to-date source of information on business units ***
***As all significant units engaged in legitimate agriculture activity are required to be registered with IRD coverage will be high ***

## Option 5 - Advantages

**Provides a cost effective means of covering most NZ agricultural activity**
**Based on a proven infrastructure that supports key requirements including well defined standards and classifications**
**Uses existing maintenance processes including:**
***Tax monitoring – births, deaths, activity levels, addresses etc ***
***Annual Frame Update Survey – regular updates for significant businesses incl complex multi-unit structures***
**Supports sample design based on economic significance**
**Allows for integration with other SNZ or administrative data to enhance the range of outputs (e.g. financial data, employment data etc)**

## Option 5 – Advantages (continued)

**The BF is well understood by survey practitioners and has been designed as a source for survey frames**
**No legal constraints, updating is not reliant on respondent consent re supply to external parties e.g. AgriBase**

## Option 4 - Challenges

**Duplicates - several tax units associated with one 'farm‘**
***2 or more tax entities for one production unit e.g. land holding trusts***
***2 or more productive units on one farm e.g. core farm plus sharemilker***
**BF maintenance strategy is geared to support large businesses**
**The majority of lifestyle farming activities cannot be identified**
**Agricultural activity that is secondary to the main business activity is difficult to identify**

## Future frame enhancements

**A frame 'tidy up' prior to the 2005 agriculture survey, automating update processes where possible**
**Establishing a concordance between the Business Frame and AgriBase**
**2005/06 propose testing feasibility of linking satellite imagery and production data**
**Establish an ongoing programme of frame coverage evaluation in the form of an 'independent' frame enumeration study**