Establishing a survey frame for agriculture: The New Zealand experience

1. Establishing a survey frame for agriculture:The New Zealand experience Andrew Hunter Manager Business, Financial & Structural Statistics Statistics New Zealand

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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