ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 Establishing a survey frame for agriculture: The New Zealand experience Andrew Hunter Manager Business, Financial & Structural Statistics Statistics New Zealand

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 Agriculture Statistics in New Zealand First recorded data – 1861 Annual survey or census most years to 1996 Survey programme ceased in 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

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 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

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 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

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 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)

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 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

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 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

ICASIII Cancun Mexico, November 2004 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