Archive:Supporting sustainable agriculture policies with multiple statistical answers
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- Published in Sigma - The Bulletin of European Statistics, 2010/01
‘Our job at Eurostat is to support policymakers with basic, high-quality statistics and precise indicators which measure the impact of farming on the environment. The information should also enable the assessment of agricultural and environmental policies,’ said Pedro Díaz Muñoz, Eurostat Director for Sectoral and Regional Statistics.
Introduction
Sustainable farming aims at obtaining a balance between the benefits of agricultural activities, such as food production, landscape preservation and biodiversity, and negative pressures, such as erosion, emissions, eutrophication and reduced quality of air, water and soil.
‘It is also important to keep in mind that agricultural activities are strongly linked to other sectors of society. Farming does not only affect the future of farming, but areas such as public health and the environment as well,’ said Mr Díaz Muñoz.
‘In addition, the environment is a major political and social concern. Issues such as the destruction of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources and climate change are of the highest political priority. In particular, agricultural activities impact — and are impacted by — the environment, and statistics have to measure all these interrelations,’ Mr Díaz Muñoz continued.
‘Therefore, the European Union (EU)’s common agricultural policy does not only focus on production. Finding the right balance between agricultural and non-agricultural activities in rural areas is also a matter of concern for policymakers,’ he said.
Indicators at the top of the pyramid
Eurostat’s response to sustainable agriculture goes in several directions. Eurostat is committed to regularly producing 28 agri-environment indicators, which have been agreed by the European Commission. They provide information on the impact of policy, on land use, on the use of pesticides, fertilisers and chemicals, on emissions and on farm management practices.
‘These indicators are at the top of the ‘statistical pyramid’. The basis of the pyramid is made up of a large amount of detailed data obtained from different sources, which are used for analysis,’ said Mr Díaz Muñoz.
The largest source of information is the farm structure survey, which is conducted every three years. The next round, which will take place in 2010, will be a full census operation. It will provide detailed information of all agricultural holdings in the EU and will also include a special survey on agricultural production methods.
The second source is the Land use/cover area frame survey (LUCAS), which gives a snapshot of how land is used today in the EU. LUCAS is an on-site operation, which means that data are collected in the field from preselected sample points. These data are complemented with more general data from the European Environment Agency’s land cover survey.
The third major area relates to plant protection products, where a new regulation will permit the development of a set of data on pesticides and their impact on the environment and health.
Together with Member States, Eurostat also elaborates ‘agricultural economic accounts’ which are a satellite account to the national accounts. These data provide an overview of agricultural activities. The main purpose is to analyse the production process and primary income generated by agricultural activities and to try in a more coherent way to measure their impact on the economy and the environment.
‘For many years, Eurostat has also collected data on organic farming, which is an area of growing importance in the EU. Twenty per cent of the EU’s arable land is “organic” today and harmonised EU rules guarantee the authenticity of organic products and allow us to produce comparable statistics,’ said Mr Díaz Muñoz.
Finally, Eurostat has one of the world’s biggest databases on fishery and aquaculture production. These data are, for example, essential for monitoring the status of fish stocks.
‘Currently, there are no specific indicators related to organic aquaculture production, but they will certainly come in the future. Discussions on the statistics needed for such indicators have already started in several international fora,’ said Mr Díaz Muñoz.
Keeping legislation up to date
One of the challenges in the area is to adapt legislation to changing needs. Historically, EU agricultural law focused on production and consequently it provided detailed data on production. Time series are long and provision of data is stable.
‘There is substantially less legislation which deals with the impact of farming. This phenomenon is also more complicated to measure, but when agricultural policies enlarge their scope, statistics have to follow,’ said Mr Díaz Muñoz.
In parallel, efforts to simplify statistical legal requirements are ongoing. Eurostat and national statistical organisations have agreed on a strategy for the future of agricultural statistics. Recent legislative initiatives, such as the one planned on permanent crops, which will replace legal acts on orchards and vines, will reduce information demands. The frequency of requested datasets have also been cut in many other areas. The farm structure survey is, for example, now carried out every third year, instead of every second year as in the past.
EU statisticians are sometimes criticised for moving too slowly. However, Mr Díaz Muñoz said that developing new legislation and launching new data collections are time and resource consuming.
‘To find the best and most effective way to collect new data, we need to do research and pilot studies. Furthermore, we need to get all 27 EU countries onboard and the negotiation process can sometimes be time-consuming.’
Vision of the future
According to Mr Díaz Muñoz, there is a need to better capture the links between the environment and agriculture in the future. Current sector statistics give a partial picture. To estimate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities, statistics on livestock, waste, production methods and land use are necessary. However, statisticians cannot estimate the impact climate change will have on agriculture in the future, nor can they assess the effects of mitigation measures, which have already been taken, with current methods and data.
‘A more holistic approach that focuses on measuring and combining outputs from different data collections will be required. While sound frameworks — in the form of satellite accounts — should be developed in the medium term, basic statistical datasets should be made available as they are produced,’ said Mr Díaz Muñoz.
‘Furthermore, environment and agriculture have a strong territorial component. It is, therefore, important to analyse data at a detailed geographical level. To make this possible, a large amount of individual information should be linked to its geo-reference. In parallel, disclosure control methods should be developed to protect the confidentiality of respondents.’
Finally, Mr Díaz Muñoz said that any increase of statistical needs should be compensated by developing more efficient production methods which optimise the use of existing information such as administrative sources.
‘This will, on the one hand, reduce response burden, but may, on the other hand, hamper the quality and increase production costs at the statistical organisations. Therefore, methods and tools will have to be implemented to tackle these problems. The collaboration amongst partners in statistical production will be essential to achieve the critical mass needed for all these activities,’ concluded Mr Díaz Muñoz.