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ICES III June 2007

ICES III June 2007. The Redesign of Agriculture Surveys by Laurie Reedman and Claude Poirier. Outline . Background Current Situation Priorities Scope Issues Next Steps. Mandate of the Agriculture Statistics Program.

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ICES III June 2007

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  1. ICES III June 2007 The Redesign of Agriculture Surveys by Laurie Reedman and Claude Poirier

  2. Outline • Background • Current Situation • Priorities • Scope • Issues • Next Steps

  3. Mandate of the Agriculture Statistics Program • Estimates of agriculture production for crops, horticulture, livestock and animal products, as well as revenues and expenses • To conduct the Census of Agriculture (CEAG) every 5 years • To manage the statistical system of Canada's agriculture sector from data collection to publication • Ensure quality outputs for economic analysis and policy making in Canada

  4. Current Situation • Large regular surveys: Crops, Livestock, Hogs, Atlantic, Farm Financial, Fruit and Vegetables, Greenhouse, Sod and Nursery • Smaller regular surveys: Potato Area and Yield, Potato Prices, other prices • Irregular surveys: cost recovery surveys on the environment, farming practices, risk management • Administrative data • Farm Register (FR)

  5. Priorities • Reduce response burden • Individual; whole population • Improve robustness • Standardize methods and adopt “best practices” • Coverage • Efficient use of internal resources • Efficient use of the farming community’s capacity to respond

  6. Scope • The surveys that use a static frame for the 5 year period between censuses: • Crops • Livestock • Atlantic • Farm Financial • The methodology of survey design

  7. Small Farm Exclusion Threshold • Want to reduce burden on the many small farms that do not have much impact on survey estimates • Propose a method to compensate for the under-coverage that would result from excluding the small farms from the regular survey sampling

  8. Who are the small farms? • Current small farm threshold is $10K reported for the sale of agriculture products on CEAG • 21% of all farms and 0.6% of total sales • Other small farm thresholds could be: • $25K, 39% of all farms, 2.4% of total sales • $50K, 53% of all farms, 5.6% of total sales • The bottom 5% of sales in each province, 50% of farms

  9. What do the small farms contribute? • Say threshold is $25K in sales on CEAG 2006 … • 2% of hogs in Canada • 4% of field crop area in Manitoba • 9% of the field crop area in Atlantic Canada • 10% of program payments in Alberta • 22% of total farm capital in New Brunswick • 30% of sheep in Alberta • 35% of beef cattle in Ontario • Nearly 100,000 acres in different varieties of lentils, beans, dry peas and chick peas in Saskatchewan and Alberta

  10. How to estimate for the small farms if not through regular surveys • Admin sources (tax) do not have commodity data, not adequate • CEAG 2006 • Annual Farm Update Survey (FUS) • Sample is drawn from tax records, producer lists and the margins of the FR to detect farms not already in the active population • Expand scope to also represent the small farms • Augment questionnaire to cover more commodities • Increase sample size to provide reliable estimates

  11. Factors in Decision Making • CEAG and/or FUS can adequately estimate livestock variables, the major crops and many components of the Farm Financial Survey (FFS) • CEAG questionnaire does not have the varieties of lentils, beans, dry peas and chick peas • Unlikely that the FUS questionnaire would have detailed commodities • Small farms are part of the target population for some FFS concepts

  12. Decision for 2006 Redesign • Risk of under coverage is too high …Crops and FFS are not ready to raise the small farm exclusion threshold • Not feasible to redesign FUS just for Livestock and Atlantic • Decision: • keep small farm threshold at $10K for all surveys • pilot redesign of FUS, to demonstrate its ability to measure the under coverage • stratum boundary at $25K

  13. Stratification and Sample Allocation • Reduce sample sizes, ensure reliable estimates for domains of interest • As few strata as necessary • As few take-all strata as necessary • Use generalized software • Stratify once for the 5 year period

  14. Crops Survey • Estimate acreage of crops, production and yield at provincial as well as sub-provincial level, 6 surveys annually • Size classes based on total field crop area • Key crops are barley, corn for grain, oats, soybeans, winter wheat and hay • Target sample size is 16,000

  15. Crops Survey continued • Allocated sample to the provinces proportional to the square root of number of farms • Multivariate allocation to strata, using key variables • Calculated theoretical coefficients of variation (CVs) and also selected a random sample and verified that there were no deviations in the estimates

  16. Livestock Survey • Estimates totals of different types of cattle, sheep and hogs, at provincial level, 2 surveys annually • Size classes (counts of animals) within farm type • Key variables are total cattle, beef cows, total pigs, sows, total sheep, and also milk cows in some provinces • Target sample size 10,000

  17. Atlantic Survey • Estimates both crops and livestock variables in Atlantic provinces, 2 surveys annually • Challenge to measure crops and livestock with one sample, farms tend to be mixed • Size classes within farm type • Key variables are total cattle, total pigs and total field crops, and potatoes in Prince Edward Island • Target sample size 1,200

  18. Farm Financial Survey • Estimates financial activity and farm characteristics at provincial level, 1 survey annually • Size classes (total assets) within farm type • Sample is allocated based on total farm revenue • Sample size is usually 18,000

  19. Summary of Sample Allocation

  20. Large or Complex Farms • Group of people dedicated to collecting and maintaining data pertaining to the biggest and most influential farms • Manage the response burden • Profiling once each year • Control number of times they are contacted, carry-forward information for some survey occasions

  21. Frame Maintenance • Changes in stratification variables • Minimized by having a robust stratification • Births from the Farm Update Survey • Same probability of selection as rest of frame • Updates from Farm Register • Are they independent, is there a risk of bias? • Deaths • Are they independent, can we drop them? • Partnerships, buy-outs, splits

  22. Sample Co-ordination • Permanent random numbers • Moving, growing sampling windows • What to do about strata with high sampling fractions • What to do about births • What to do about irregular surveys • What to do about special requests, for example, when more sample is needed to improve precision for a particular domain

  23. Next Steps • Confirm all assumptions and decisions with CEAG 2006 data • Create new survey frames • Select samples • Monitor performance on first few survey occasions, evaluate performance • Estimation system, review of the Farm Register • Redesign FUS • Examine target population definition

  24. For more information, or to obtain a French copy of this presentation, please contact: Pour de plus amples informations ou pour obtenir une copie en français du document, veuillez contacter: Thank-you Laurie Reedman Email / Courriel: laurie.reedman@statcan.ca Phone number / Téléphone: 613-951-7301

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