Structure of agricultural holdings
NOTES OF METHODOLOGY
Objective and legal basis of the survey
The objective of the survey is to obtain the most accurate data possible on the state in the Croatian agriculture having in mind the importance of this sector for the economy as a whole.
The Farm Structure Survey (hereafter referred to as FSS) is a part of basic statistical survey in the area of agriculture. Results of the Survey are comparable at the international level.
FSS is obligatory conducted every tenth year as censuses, while in the years between them it is conducted as sample-based surveys. In the Republic of Croatia, this survey was conducted in 2003 as the Census of Agriculture, while in 2007, 2010 and 2013 it was carried out as a sample-based survey.
The objective of the survey is to collect the following data:
The following legal basis was applied:
Coverage
The FSS covers all agricultural holdings, that is, private family farms and business entities and parts thereof that are engaged in agricultural production.
Reporting units are business entities and parts thereof defined in section A Agriculture, forestry and fishing according to the NKD 2007. as well as other business entities and parts thereof engaged in agricultural production but classified in other activities. Data are collected on reports that are submitted by postal services to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.
Reporting units are also private family farms engaged in agricultural production, whose data are collected by interviewers.
Selection of observation units
Since 2007, the main sampling frame for selecting observation units, which are also reporting units, has been the Statistical Register of Agricultural Holdings kept and maintained by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.
Agricultural holdings included in the survey frame for 2007 were those having the physical production above certain criteria:
a) At least one hectare of utilised agricultural area, or
- At least 0.1 hectares of utilised agricultural area and 0.9 hectares of forest, or
- At least 0.3 hectares of vineyards, and/or orchards, or
- Two or more livestock units (LSUs), or
- 0.15 to 0.3 hectares of vineyards/orchards and 1 or 2 LSUs, or
- Are market producers of vegetables, medical herbs, strawberries, mushrooms, flowers or ornamental plants.
Agricultural holdings included in the survey frame for 2010 and 2013 were those having the physical production above certain criteria:
a) At least 0.4 hectares of utilised agricultural area, or
b) At least 0.5 LSUs, or
c) Less than 0.4 hectares of utilised agricultural area, but:
- At least 0.1 hectares of vineyards, olive groves and/or or chards, or
- Any area of nurseries, or
- Are market producers of vegetables, medical herbs, strawberries, mushrooms, flowers or ornamental plants
- Any number of beehives.
The sample design for family farms is a stratified random sample based on sampling experts’ selection and on history experience of the Agriculture Department. The final weights are products of sampling weights and non-response weights at the strata level (two spatial units for statistics at the NUTS 2 level combined with four size classes referring to production).
Sources and methods of data collection
The data are collected by the FSS (sample-based surveys) or in the Agricultural Census (the last one in 2003).
Data on business entities and parts thereof are collected on reports submitted to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics by postal service, while data on family farms are collected by interviewers using selected stratified sample survey. The two questionnaires are slightly different in the chapter related to labour force.
Definitions
Agricultural holding is a production management unit engaged in agriculture and operating as a company, craft or cooperative if it is registered for conducting agricultural activities as well as a private family farm, which jointly use labour force and production means (machinery, buildings or land, etc.).
The reference date of the survey is 1 June in a year when the survey is planned to be carried out. Some data refer to a period of one year before the survey, mostly from 1 June of a previous year to 31 May of a current year (labour force, irrigation and equipment used in production of renewable energy).
Agricultural production includes the following:
- Growing of annual crops
- Growing of perennial crops
- Growing of seeding material and ornamental plants
- Breeding of livestock, poultry and other animals
- Mixed agricultural production (growing crops and breeding livestock and other animals together)
- Auxiliary activities in agriculture and activities that follow harvest (land preparation, planting, crop attendance, harvest/gathering, cleaning, peeling, seed processing). Activities related to breeding animals, such as feeding or cleaning of facilities, are also included.
Agricultural production does not include:
Labour force
Manager is a natural person responsible for usual daily financial and production routines of running a holding.
Holder is a person responsible in legal and economic terms for functioning of a holding; a person who has the legal title, that is, a person who takes on economic risks of doing business.
The owner/user can have direct ownership of a farm, have a lease contract on it (for a longer or a shorter period of time) or be given the estate to benefit from and take care of.
Regularly employed labour force are persons who worked for the holding during the last 12 months on the weekly basis, irrespective of the number of hours they worked weekly, and persons who worked regularly during only a part of that time for some reason, e.g. because of education, sickness, disease, accident or death, commencement or termination of employment within the last 12 months or cessation of work due to natural disasters (floods, fires, etc.). Employed persons do not include seasonal workers, who do not have a contract of employment.
Non-regularly employed labour force are those who worked temporarily on a holding during the reference period of 12 months.
Annual work unit is a reference unit expressing the extent of work in annual work units (AWU). One annual work unit corresponds to one person working full time for a holding and amounts to 1 800 hours.
Agricultural land
Total area of land consists of the utilized agricultural land and non-agricultural land area.
Utilised agricultural area is the total agricultural area that was used for crop production in a year in question. It covers arable land, kitchen gardens, orchards, olive groves, vineyards, meadows and pastures, nurseries, land under osier willow and other permanent crops (Christmas trees).
Arable land refers to the land that is regularly farmed and cultivated and is under crop rotation. The following plants are grown on arable land: cereals, pulses for dry grain, root and tuber crops, industrial crops, fodder crops, fresh vegetables and strawberries, flowers and horticultural, seeds and seedlings plants as well as fallow land.
Kitchen gardens are areas scheduled for growing of crops (mostly vegetables) that are intended for consumption by persons living in a household and mainly not intended for sale. Only occasional surplus of products grown on these areas is sold outside the household.
Root and tuber crops include potatoes (early, late and seed), sugar beet (excluding seed) and fodder root crops (fodder beet, fodder kale, fodder turnip and other fodder root crops).
Industrial crops include oil crops (soya-bean, sunflowers, rapeseed, pumpkins for oil and hemp for oil), tobacco and other industrial plants (aromatic, spices and medicinal herbs, and other industrial plants).
Green fodder crops cover green maize, other green fodder crops, clover and mixtures, lucerne, leguminous plants and temporary grassland.
Other green fodder crops cover cereals for green fodder, other annual grasses, fodder sorghum and sudangrass.
Leguminous plants cover field peas for green fodder, other green leguminous plants and multiannual clover-grass mixtures.
Temporary grassland covers multiannual grass-clover mixtures and multiannual grass and mixtures of grass.
Vegetables cover areas intended for growing of crops intended for sale in fresh and industrial processing and they are as follows: cauliflower and broccoli, white cabbage, other brassicas (kale, red cabbage and kohlrabi), lettuce (all types), leek, other leafy vegetables (mangel, spinach, celery, chicory etc.), tomatoes cucumbers and gherkins; melons; watermelons; peppers; other top fruit (eggplants, courgettes, pumpkins etc.), strawberries; onion, garlic; carrot; beetroot; other root vegetables (horseradish, radish, parsnip, kohlrabi etc.); beans, fresh grains or string beans, peas, fresh grains or string beans and other (not elsewhere mentioned) vegetables (sweet corn and others).
Permanent crops cover areas under orchards, olive groves, vineyards, nurseries and other permanent crops (osier willows and Christmas trees) which are not cultivated in crop rotation, which are not permanent grassland and occupy land in longer period and give yields by many years.
Permanent grasslands are areas used for grazing, making hay and silage (meadows, intensive and extensive pastures). They do not include:
Other land
Unutilised or unused agricultural land is an area no longer worked for economic, social or other reasons and which is not used in the crop rotation system.
Wooded area is an area covered with trees or forest shrubs, including poplar plantations inside or outside woods and forest-tree nurseries grown in woodland for the holding’s own requirements as well as forest facilities (forest roads, storage depots for timber, etc.).
Animals
Livestock unit (LSU) is a standard measurement unit that allows the aggregation of various categories of livestock in order to enable comparison between them as regards years or different countries. The starting point for calculation of coefficients is 500 kg of live weight of animals. We used Eurostat’s LSU coefficients (table 1.).
Poultry
Poultry includes broilers, hens, turkeys, geese, ducks and other poultry.
Table 1. List of livestock unit coefficients (LSU) used in Republic of Croatia, by years
|
|
2007. |
2010. |
2013. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Equidae |
0,8 |
0,8 |
0,8 |
|
Cattle |
|
|
|
|
Young cattle under 1 year |
0,4 |
0,4 |
0,4 |
|
Calves for slaughter |
0,4 |
0,4 |
0,4 |
|
Calves for fattening (young bulls) |
0,4 |
0,4 |
0,4 |
|
Calves for fattening (young heifers) |
0,4 |
0,4 |
0,4 |
|
Young cattle, 1 to 2 years |
|
|
|
|
Breeding heifers |
0,7 |
0,7 |
0,7 |
|
Heifers for fattening |
0,7 |
0,7 |
0,7 |
|
Male (bulls, oxen) |
0,7 |
0,7 |
0,7 |
|
Cattle over 2 years |
|
|
|
|
Breeding heifers |
0,7 |
0,7 |
0,7 |
|
Heifers for fattening |
0,7 |
0,7 |
0,7 |
|
Dairy cows |
1,0 |
1,0 |
1,0 |
|
Suckling cows |
0,8 |
0,8 |
0,8 |
|
Male (bulls for breeding, oxen) |
1,0 |
1,0 |
1,0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pigs |
|
|
|
|
Piglets under 20 kg |
0,027 |
0,027 |
0,027 |
|
Young pigs, 20 to 50 kg |
0,3 |
0,3 |
0,3 |
|
Fattening pigs, 50 to 80 kg |
0,3 |
0,3 |
0,3 |
|
Fattening pigs, 80 to 110 kg |
0,3 |
0,3 |
0,3 |
|
Fattening pigs, 110 kg or over |
0,3 |
0,3 |
0,3 |
|
Breeding pigs (50 kilograms or over) |
|
|
|
|
Boars |
0,5 |
0,5 |
0,5 |
|
Gilts not yet mated |
0,5 |
0,5 |
0,5 |
|
Gilts mated for the first time |
0,5 |
0,5 |
0,5 |
|
Sows not yet mated |
0,5 |
0,5 |
0,5 |
|
Mated sows |
0,5 |
0,5 |
0,5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Poultry |
|
|
|
|
Layers |
0,014 |
0,014 |
0,014 |
|
Chickens for fattening (broilers) |
0,007 |
0,007 |
0,007 |
|
Turkeys |
0,030 |
0,030 |
0,030 |
|
Geese |
0,030 |
0,030 |
0,030 |
|
Ducks |
0,030 |
0,030 |
0,030 |
|
Other poultry |
0,030 |
0,030 |
0,030 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rabbits |
|
|
|
|
Breeding rabbits, females |
0,020 |
0,020 |
0,020 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sheep |
|
|
|
|
Lambs and young sheep under 1 year |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Milk ewe lambs put to ram for the first time |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Other ewe lams put to ram for the first time |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Milk ewes that have already lambed |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Other ewes that have already lambed |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Rams |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Barren sheep |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Goats |
|
|
|
|
Goatlings and young goats under 1 year |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Goats mated for the first time |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Goats which have already kidded |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
He-goats |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Barren goats |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
|
Beehives |
- |
- |
- |
Other
Standard output (SO) is a monetary value of gross agricultural production, the price at the gate of the farm.
Typology means a uniform classification of agricultural holdings in the EU Member States at the farm structure surveys: in terms of economic size (expressed in 1 000 euros) and according to the type of agricultural production.
Classifications
Published data on the structure of agricultural holdings use the following standard classifications:
NUTS and NKPJS – Standard Classification of Territorial Units: http://www.dzs.hr/App/klasus/default.aspx?lang=hr
Typology of Agricultural Holdings determined by the Commission No. 1242/2008 of 8 December 2008:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/SL/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32009R0867&from=EN
Other methodological explanations
Questionnaire (only in Croatian):
Report on Structure of Agricultural Holdings and Methods of Agricultural Production in 2016
Theme: Questionnaires of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics
http://www.dzs.hr/Hrv/important/Obrasci/01-Poljoprivreda/Lista.htm
Quality report of statistical surveys
Report on the Structure of Agricultural Holdings (PO22/STR)
Theme: Quality reporting on statistical surveys
Due to rounding of numbers, a total sum may differ from totals of class sizes.
Abbreviations
AWU annual work unit
Eurostat Statistical Office of the European Communities
ha hectare
LSU livestock unit
NKD 2007. National Classification of Activities, 2007 version
NN Narodne novine, official gazette of the Republic of Croatia
SO standard output
‘000 thousand
Symbols
-no occurrence