Relevance
The Farm Structure
Survey (FSS), also known as the Survey on the structure of agricultural
holdings, is carried out to collect data on land use and its utilisation,
livestock numbers, rural development, land use, livestock numbers, rural
development, management and farm labour force.
The census of agriculture,
also known as the Survey on Agricultural Production Methods (SAPM) additionally
provides results on agricultural production methods.
The legal basis for
the FSS and SAPM is regulation (EC) No. 1166/2008 of 19 November 2008, which
repealed Council Regulation 571/88.
Methodological
description of survey
The FSS is carried
out every 3 years between Agriculture Censuses. Censuses are conducted every ten years, in
years ending with “0”.
For the FSS around
1,500 farmers are selected from the agricultural register. The optimum allocation method is used for selecting agricultural
holdings and strata are defined according to the
farm typology codes and the economic size class of the holding.
A letter is sent in
advance to the chosen farmers which informs them that they have been selected
to participate in such a survey. An
initial contact is then made between the interviewer and the farmer and an
appointment is set for face-to-face interviews.
To reduce burden on
respondents, other FSS data is collected from other administrative sources and
surveys. These include data on organic
area from the organic farming register, cattle, sheep and goats data from the
bovine register, pigs’ data from the annual pigs census, and rural development
data from the Agriculture and Rural Payments Agency (ARPA).
Accuracy and
reliability of data
Further information
about accuracy and reliability of data can be viewed from the quality reports
available on the NSO’s metadata website.
Timeliness and
punctuality of data
A news release on FSS is
published every three years, following the collection of FSS data. Similarly, a news release is published every ten
years following the Census of Agriculture.
These are published on the NSO’s website as scheduled in the Advance
Release Calendar.
Data is always collected and sent to Eurostat within
12 months after the end of the survey year.
Accessibility and
clarity of data
Tables on the FSS are also
included in the annual publication ‘Agriculture and Fisheries’ which is
available on the NSO’s website. The publication
was last published in 2016 for reference year 2014.
A quality report of
the data collection is compiled according to an established structure and sent
to Eurostat. A similar report on FSS is
available on the NSO’s metadata website.
A publication
related to the Census of Agriculture is also disseminated every 10 years
following the collection of the data. Past
publications cover reference periods between October 2000 and September
2001, and from September 2009 to August 2010.
Coherence and comparability /
consistency of data
Data collected from
this survey is comparable with data from other European Union member states as
all countries follow the definitions laid out in the handbook on implementing
the FSS and SAPM. FSS data is fully comparable as from 2003 onwards
and also with the data from the Census of Agriculture.
Data on livestock collected in the FSS, is comparable to the annual administrative data collected on livestock data.
Metadata