INEbase / Structure of Agricultural Operations Survey 1997 / Methodology

 Objectives

The 1997 survey has the following basic objectives:

- Obtain information comparable with that demanded by the EU of its Member States.
- Understand the current agrarian sector structure and its development with regards to the 1989 agrarian census and previous surveys.

 Ambito de aplicación

The survey's implementation is considered from three scopes:

Geographic scope

The research includes the whole national territory: The Spanish penninsula, Islas Baleares, Archipielago Canario, Ceuta y Melilla.

Temporal scope

The survey information refers to the agricultural year 1997, in other words, the agricultural campaign between 1 October 1996 and the 30 September 1997, except for livestock, where the reference date is the day of the interview.

Population scope

The target population is defined by the following criteria:

- All agricultural operations that had at least 1 Ha. of Used Agricultural Area (UAA) in the 1989 Agrarian Census.

- All agricultural operations that had at least 0.2 Ha. in the 1989 Agrarian Census. UAA used for fruits, vegetables and flowers, greenhouse cultivation, irrigated or hard greenhouse fruit trees.

- Agricultural operations that had one or more Animal Units (AU) with a Total Gross Margin (TGM) euqal to or more than 0.75 European Size Units (ESU) in the 89' Agrarian Census.

These three criteria are independent, in other words, at lease one of these needs to be met in order for the operation to be considered part of the target population.

Operations that are clearly forestry are excluded from the survey if they do not comply with the aforementioned conditions, given that the survey refers to strictly agricultural operations. However, when the operation researched has a certain amount of forest, it will will included in the questionnaire.

 Concepts and definitions

Agricultural operation

This is the type unit from which agricultural products are obtained under the responsibility of an owner. This type unit is generally characterised by the use of the same means of production as well as labour or machinery.

The following are not considered to be agricultural operations:

- Riding schools, stables and land used for exercising race horses.
- Kennels
- Animal businesses, slaughter houses and others without animal breeding.
- Draught or work animal operations, if the unit does not breed these animals.
- Zoos, fur farms and farms for the repopulation of species such as dogs, cats and ornamental birds.
- Plots of land that are developed or where development work has begun on the day of the interview.
- Agricultural services companies.

The operations's geographical situation

An agricultural operation is considered to be located, for the purposes of the survey, in the municipality where the greatest part of its lands are found, or, where there are doubts, where the only or main operation building lies.

Agricultural operations without lands are considered to be assigned to the municipality where the owner has declared their livestock or, if there is no declaration, to the municipality where the farming facilities are located.

Owner of the operation

The owner of the operation is designated as the individual or legal entity that, acting freely and autonomously, takes on the risk of an agricultural operation, managing it themselves or through someone else.

LEGAL STATUS AND OPERATION MANAGEMENT

Legal Status of the Owner

The different categories of legal status or condition are the following:

- Individual

The owner is considered to be an individual for the purposes of this survey when there is one individual person or a group of individuals (siblings, joint heirs, etc.) that work a joint heirship or other grouping of lands or livestock together, without having legally formed a company or association.

When two or more individuals share the ownership of an operation, just one of them shall be stated for identification purposes in accordance with the following criteria:

- The person who manages the operation or has greatest involvement in its mangement.
- The person who has the greatest involvement in the operation's financial or economical responsibilities.
- The oldest person.

- Company

Is a group of people whose partnership agreement is documented in a public deed and is also registered in the Mercantile Register. Companies are categorised in Public Limited Companies, Limited, Collective and Company Responsibility.

- Public Entity

In this case, ownership corresponds to one of the different public administrations: Central, Autonomous or Local.

- Production cooperative

Is an association that works to obtain agricultural products as a joint undertaking, complying with the principles and regulations of the General Law of Cooperatives and their development norms.

- Other legal status

Any other legal entity is included in this section that has not been categorised in the previous sections, for example, Farming Partnerships (FP) or Joint Ownerships (JO).

- Operation manager

Is the person responsible for the current and daily management of the agricultural operation.

The operation manager coincides, in general, with the owner. If the two do not coincide, a distinction is made if the operation manager is a member of the owner's family or another paid person.

Each operation has just one operation manager. It is the person that contributes the most to the management of the operation. If this contribution is distributed equally, the operation manager is considered to be the oldest person.

LAND TENANCY REGIME

This characteristic only refers to agricultural operations with lands. It is the legal regime under which the owner of the operation operates, even though in the same oepration, there may be lands under different tenancy agreements:

- Owned lands. The following lands, for the purposes of the survey, are considered as such: those lands where the owner has right of ownership, with or without written deeds, and lands that have been worked peacefully and without interruption by the owner for a minimum of thirty years without paying rent. Also included in this group are usufruct lands.

Lands that are the property of the owner and given to third parties are not considered to form part of the operation. In operations where the owner is a municipal or neighbourhood community, lands that have been given or leased during the reference campaign do not form part of the operation.

- Leased lands. Land is being leased if the owner benefits from the exploitation of the land via the payment of a levy of rent, in cash, in kind or both at the same time, independently of the operation's results.

- Share-cropping lands. Are those lands that are the property of a third person given temporarily to the sharecropper via the payment of a certain percentage of the product worked or the equivalent in cash. This percentage depends on the local conditions, the type of company and the owner's contribution.

- Lands under other tenancy regimes. Included in this section are lands that do not come under any of the previous regimes, such as lands worked via free transfer, trust lands, lands in dispute, lands in a precarious position, ground rents, leaseholds, communal lands given over.

TOTAL AREA

The total operation area is made up of the area of all the plots included in the operation: the area owned by the owner, the area rented out for working and the area worked and governed by other types of tenancy agreement. Areas owned by the owner but given to third parties are excluded.

USED AGRICULTURAL AREA (UAA)

Is the ensemble of cultivated areas of land and lands used as permanent pastures.

Land use

The total area of each agricultural operation with land is classified in three large groups, according to the way the land is used: cultivated land, land used as permanent pastures and other lands. In all of these groups, the pure farming land as well as the proportional part in the case of association and the main farming part in the case of successive farming are included. Cultivated lands and lands used for permanent pastures are further classified into dry and irrigated lands, in accordance with the following definitions:

- Dry lands

These are considered to be lands that have not received more water than the natural rainfall during the survey's reference period.

- Irrigated lands

These are considered to be lands that have received water during the reference period via man-made procedures, whatever the duration or quantity of watering, even if it is of a temporary nature.

-Cultivated lands

Are those lands which are tended to, however they are used and whenever this has been carried out during the agricultural year. These lands are tended to with hoes, ploughs, harrows, cultivators, scarifiers, toothed harrows. Work involving spreading fertilizer, rolling or boarding, cutting, hand hoeing or reseeding in the permanent pastures is not included in this category. Cultivated lands are classified into arable crops, fallow land, kitchen gardens and wooded lands.

- Arable crops

This category contains plants whose upper part has herbaceous consistency.

The following groups are considered: grain cereals, leguminous plants for grain, potatoes, industrial crops, fodder crops, vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants, seeds and plants for sale and other crops.

Seeds designed to be used by the operation itself are included in the corresponding crop sections.

- Fallow lands

Are lands that are being rested throughout the duration of the campaign, without any type of crop, even though they may have been worked on.

Also included in this section are lands spread with green manure.

- Kitchen gardens

Are areas designed for the growing of agricultural fruit and vegetable products, including potatoes. If the production of potatoes is mainly for self consumption on the operation, the area should be less than five square dekametres (500 m2).

- Wooded lands

Contain plants whose upper part has a woody consistency. One common characteristic of all of these is that of occupying the land during long periods of time without the need to be transplanted after each harvest.

Areas used for fruit trees, olives, vines, nurseries with woody, but not forest crops, green-house woody crops and other permanent crops are included.

Forest trees and their nurseries are excluded.

LAND FOR PERMANENT PASTURES

Are lands used for the permanent production of grass, during a period of five years or more and which are not included in crop rotations. The following types are considered:

- Permanent fields or grass lands: lands used permanently for the production of grass, characteristic of areas with a certain degree of humidity and whose main exploitation is carried out through harvesting. These lands may be tended to in some way, such as with reseeding, fertilizer, rollers or boards. Fodder crops are excluded, as they are included in arable crops.

- Other areas used for pastures: other lands not included in the previous section that have been used as pasture for livestock.

Meadows and pastures are included, as well as disused land and scrubland when they have been used for some type of livestock farming.

OTHER LANDS

This section contains other lands, which although forming part of the operation, do not belong to the so-called Used Agricultural Area (UAA).

Modalities:

- Disused land: land that is characterised by its lack of performance and which has not provided any kind of exploitation for livestock.

- Straw-like: land mainly covered with straw or alfa grass, which hasn't been harvested. If some kind of performance has been obtained from the land, this should be registered in the woody crops group, thus forming part of the UAA.

- Brush: land predominated by wild shrubs, such as rockrose, heather, gorse, furze, broom, rosemary, thyme, European fan palm, Kermes oak, boiss or lentiscus.

- Forest tree species: areas covered with forest tree species, which are not principally used for agricultural purposes or which have purposes that are different from forestry ones.

They are classified according to the forest tree species that make up their population:

a) Leafy trees: forest areas with at least a 75% covering of broad-leafed trees, such as eucalyptus, holm oaks, common oaks.

b) Conifers (resinous): forest areas with at least a 75% covering of acicular leaves or flake-shaped leaves, such as pines, junipers, firs.

c) Mixed: forest areas that do not include any one of the previous cases.

They are also classified by the destination of the wood produced within them:

a) Non-commercial: treed areas whose production is principally aimed at self-consumption or is used for preserving the environment, protecting the land or as a boundary between operations.

b) Commercial: treed areas whose production is principally aimed at the sale of wood, firewood or other forestry products with profitable aims.

- Other areas: included in this group are those lands that form part of the the total operation area, but are not UAA nor belong to any of the previous sections, therefore corresponding to the other lands group. In this way, the following is registered:

a) Areas that are agricultural, but have not been used for financial, social or other similar reasons and are not included in the alternative crops section. These areas may be used once again with means usually available on the operation.

b) Areas which are not directly used for vegetable production, but are needed for the operation, such as land occupied by buildings, stables, threshing floors, and areas that are not suitable for agricultural production, in other words, those that can not be farmed without the help of very strong equipment that is not usually found on the operation, like waste ground and quarries.

IRRIGATION

Data relating to irrigation is collected with reference to two area types:

- The operation's irrigated area: is the area of all plots that have been effectively irrigated at least once during the survey's reference period.

- Area that has not been irrigated, even though the operation has facilities and water: is the area that has not been watered during the reference year, even though it could have been as the operation has its own technical facilities and enough water.

ASSOCIATED CROPS

Associated crops are those that coexist on the same agricultural plot or land during the agricultural campaign for all or part of the plant cycle.

Two types of information are gathered for associated crops. The proportional area taken up by each of the crops that form an association features in the tables corresponding to this same pure crop; the area taken up by the following types of association is also researched:

- Citrus fruit-Citrus fruit
- Vineyard-Arable
- Vineyard-Olive grove
- Vineyard-Fruit trees
- Olive grove-Arable
- Olive grove-Fruit trees
- Fruit trees-Arable
- Fruit trees-Fruit trees
- Corn-Beans
- Other arable crops with arable crops
- Agricultural crops-Forestry species
- Other associated crops

Mixtures of crops or mixed crops whose products are not included separately, for example mixed cereals, will be considered as single crops rather than associated crops.

SUCCESSIVE CROPS

Successive crops are those crops that grow in the same area during the agricultural campaign.

With this type of crop, the total area is allocated to the main crop, which is considered to be the crop with the greatest production value. If the production values do not noticeably differ, the main crop will be considered to be the one that has been planted for the longest time.

SECONDARY SUCCESSIVE CROPS

These are crops that precede or follow the main crop and are gathered during the twelve months of the reference period.

Horticultural crops, greenhouse crops and kitchen gardens are excluded.

The total dry and irrigated cultivated area is counted, distinguishing between whether the land is used for cereals for grain, leguminous plants for grain, oligenous plants for grain and others.

MUSHROOMS

Includes, exclusively, mushrooms grown in constructions built or adapted for this purpose, or underground or in caves.

Surface layers available for cultivation that have been filled with mull once or a number of times during the twelve months of the reference period are registered. The surface layers are counted only once even though they are used a number of times during the agricultural campaign.

GREENHOUSE BASE AREA

Is the area occupied by greenhouses used on the operation. For mobile greenhouses, the area is registered just once, even when the greenhouse is used on a number of different areas during the year. In greenhouses with a number of floors, the base area relates to the covered base floor.

LIVESTOCK

The animals existing on the operation on the day of the interview are included in this section, including those being moved between winter and summer pastures and livestock on an integration or contract basis. The integration basis is considered to be all types of contract that imply a dependence on supplies, animals, fodder and on sale. It includes therefore, vertical integration with private companies and horizontal or cooperative integration.

Animals included in the survey are classified based on the following species: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, poultry, does, beehives and other animals.

AGRICULTURAL LABOUR ON THE OPERATION

Agricultural labour includes everybody who, having passed the age of obligatory schooling, has carried out agricultural work during the period 1-X-96 to 30-IX-97.

Agricultural work is considered to be all human activity that contributes to the agricultural operation's financial results. It covers:

- Organisation and management work: purchases, sales, accounting.
- Work with sowing, planting and harvesting.
- Work with the livestock: preparation and distribution of food, milking and care.
- Storage and maintenance work on the operation: silaging, fencing, packing.
- Upkeep work on buildings, machinery and facilities.

Employees employed by others, or through mutual assistance schemes, for example labour through an agricultural services company or cooperatives, will not be considered. Domestic tasks carried out by the owner or members of his/her family or by employees that are not family will not be considered as the operation's agricultural work either. Work involving the manufacture of products deriving from the operation's production, such as cheese or cold meats, is also excluded.

Transport work relating to the operation is only considered if it is carried out by the operation's own employees.

Family labour

This characteristic is only included in agricultural operations whose owner is an individual. Family labour is considered to be the owner, his/her spouse and other family members if they carry out agricultural work for the operation on a continual or temporary basis, as paid employees or not.

Included in the owner's other family members are ancestors, descendents and other relatives, including those related by marriage or adoption, regardless of whether they live on the operation or somewhere else.

Non-family labour

Is labour which is supplied by persons different from the owner and family members in return for money, in kind or both at the same time.

It covers:

a) Labour by permanent employees, whose pay is continuous throughout the year. It includes the number of people registered by sex, age groups and intervals of full days or their equivalent worked on the operation.

Also included is the operation manager if he/she is not included in the family labour section. Included are the sex, age, number of full days worked on the operation and whether any other profit-making activity was carried out during the reference period.

b) Temporary employees' labour. The number of days worked, according to the employees' sex are registered.

Days worked on the operation by persons not directly employed by the owner

The number of days worked on the operation by persons who have not been employed directly by the owner during the twelve months preceding the survey are registered, for example employees of contracted companies.

 Measurement units and operation types

MEASUREMENT UNITS

Area units

The crop areas are expressed in hectares and areas.

Animal units

Livestock data is expressed by number of heads or in animal units (AU), which are obtained by applying a coefficient to each species and type in order to group different species in one common unit. The coefficients used are:

Dairy cows: 1; Other cows: 0.8; Male cattle of 24 months and more: 1; Female cattle of 24 moths and more: 0.5; Cattle of between 12 and 24 months: 0.7; Cattle of less than 12 months: 0.4; Sheep: 0.1; Goats: 0.1; Sows: 0.5; Replacement sows: 0.5; Piglets: 0.027; Other pigs: 0.3; Horses: 0.6; Chickens: 0.014; Laying hens: 0.014; Meat chickens and cockerels: 0.007; Turkeys, ducks and geese: 0.03; Other poultry: 0.03; Doe: 0.015. Beehives that do not become AU are exempt.

Work units

Work data for the operation are expressed in number of complete or partial days or in annual labour units (ALU); one ALU is equivalent to the work carried out by one person on a full-time basis over one year, in other words, 228 complete days.

A partial day is calculated as half of a complete day.

Other conventional measurement units

The following conventional measurement units are also used in the survey:

a) Gross Margin (GM)

Is the balance between the monetary value of the gross production and the value of certain direct costs inherent in this production.

As it is impossible to obtain this balance for each individual operation, a normalised coefficient is calculated at an Autonomous Community level for each activity on the agricultural operations, called the standard gross margin (SGM). The term activity is understood as each type of crop or livestock exploited in the region. These coefficients that determine the GM of each activity are based on average data, generally provided by operations within the Farm Accountancy Network, calculated over a reference period of a number of years and updated according to financial trends.

For the 1997 survey, the SGM reference period corresponds to the average for the years 1993, 1994 and 1995.

For each operation, the gross margin of a particular activity is calculated by multiplying its physical size, hectares or animals according to each case by the corresponding coefficient. The total of gross margins of all activities on the operation gives us the operation's total gross margin (TGM).

b) European size unit (ESU)

Economic size is expressed in European measurement units known as European size units (ESU). One ESU corresponds to 1,200 European Currency Units (ECU) of gross margin (The exchange rate used is 1 ECU = 156.98818 pts).

OPERATION TYPES

The types aim to group agricultural operations that are relatively similar in different classes, based on two essential characteristics of the operations:

- Type of farming

- Economic size

Both the type and size are determined on the basis of the gross margin.

The economic size is the TGM of an operation. The type of farming (TOF) is defined according to the relative composition, by activity, of the operation's gross margin.

The types have been conceived as a statistical analysis instrument in order to respond to the needs of agricultural policy. They allow:

a) An analysis of the operations' situation based on economic criteria.

b) A comparison of the operations' situations:

- Between different type classes.
- Between the different member states or regions.
- Between different time periods.

c) A linking of the operations' economic size with their physical size and the work factor.

  Sample design

For the Survey on the Structure of Agricultural Operations in the years 1993, 1995 and 1997, a panel has been designed which, alongside the setting up of affiliation rules, can be used to assign a probability of selection to the operations that have appeared following the 1989 Agrarian Census.

This has allowed for the conception of a single stage design, with stratification of the operations according to economic type and size and simple growth estimators.

Below are the most relevant points of the survey design.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE EXHAUSTIVE OPERATIONS

Those operations that belonged in the 1989 Agrarian Census to any of these groups have been exhaustively researched:

-One per thousand of the biggest operations according to the Total Gross Margin (TGM) within each Autonomous Community.

- For Annual Labour Units (ALU), Total Area (TA), Used Agricultural Area (UAA), Cultivated Land (CL) and Animal Units (AU) those that correspond to the application of the sigma deviation criteria or the last 5 per 1000 (the one that eliminated most was chosen) of the biggest operations according to each variable within the Autonomous Community.

- Those chosen when applying the sigma deviation criteria to TGM, ALU, CL, UAA and AU within each TOF to two digits (TOF2) of each Autmonomous Community.

The total exhaustive operations is 5693.

The sigma deviation rule (see Julien and Maranda 'Le plan de sondage de l'enquête nationale sur les fermes de 1988' Techniques d'enquête 1990, vol.16, no. 1, pp. 127-139) is an empirical rule that involves arranging the units from smallest to biggest according to a variable and taking as exhaustive those that follow the first unit, which means that the difference with the previous unit is greater than the typical deviation of the aforementioned variable.

STRATIFICATION

The strata were formed by the crossing of the TOF to two digits (TOF2) with five size groups.

Only for stratification purposes a 'new' TOF2 '45' was formed with the operations of the real 'TOF2' '44' where the AU variable measured 0. In this 'artificial' TOF2 are those operations where pature lands dominate.

Given that the criteria that defines size should depend on the TOF2, the interval limits vary depending on the aforementioned TOF2. The definition of size bears in mind the TGM, ALU, UAA, CL and AU variables. For each of these variables, five size groups are created applying the Dalenius and Hodges method (1959) (see Cochran 1977). We call each one of the categorical variables that contain an operation's group according to the previous rule GTGM, GALU, GUAA, GCL and GAU; these variables have values between 1 and 5; 1 represents the smallest operations and 5 the biggest. As of these variables, the definitive size group is defined in the following way:

for the TOF2 '45':
SIZE=MAX (GTGM, GALU, GUAA)

for the TOF2 with agricultural dominance:
SIZE=MAX(GTGM, GALU, GCL)

for the TOF2 of livestock predominance:
SIZE=MAX(GTGM, GALU, GAU).

From the definition, it is possible to deduce that an operation will be in the biggest of the classes that correspond to it for each variable. In extreme cases, the operation will be amongst the biggest if is in this class for some of the variables and it will be amongst the smallest if it is amongst the smallest for all the variables.

Each exhaustive operation is included in the corresponding TOF2 with the code size 6.

Variation coefficients

The variation coefficient is defined as the quotient between the square root of the estimate variance and the estimate. It acts as a measure of the precision of the estimate when establishing a higher quota (probability) of the relative error of this estimation in the following sense: if X is the real value, X_e the estimated value and VC the variation coefficient, it means that ¦ X-X_e¦ /X less than 1.96 times VC with a probability of 95%

With the aim of providing the user with an idea of the precision of the estimates, table 2 presents the variation coefficients of some of the most relevant variables for the national total and for autonomous communities.

Table of variation coefficients (in so many percent) of the most relevant variables

	Variables
	Number operations	Total area	UAA	Cultivated lands	TALU	AU
National total	0.37	1.24	0.66	0.71	0.57	0.94
Andalucía	0.76	1.41	1.33	1.45	1.62	2.27
Aragón	1.48	2.50	2.36	2.87	2.31	3.77
Asturias	1.05	3.72	2.65	4.92	2.00	2.63
Balears (Illes)	0.93	2.48	2.28	2.35	2.40	3.09
Canarias	1.70	3.94	2.71	3.27	2.80	5.80
Cantabria	1.09	4.22	2.33	6.81	3.41	2.67
Castilla-La Mancha	1.35	2.64	1.98	1.80	1.91	4.22
Castilla-León	1.08	4.95	1.41	1.57	1.25	1.83
Cataluña	0.89	2.64	1.66	1.85	1.41	2.99
Com. Valenciana	1.30	2.41	1.96	1.88	2.10	5.59
Extremadura	1.58	2.38	2.36	2.40	2.15	3.00
Galicia	0.94	1.60	1.54	1.96	1.43	1.81
Madrid	2.39	2.84	2.67	3.59	2.84	3.36
Murcia	2.78	3.86	3.66	3.26	2.59	4.55
Navarra	1.42	2.85	2.45	3.27	2.44	5.02
País Vasco	1.16	3.01	2.02	2.94	1.91	2.93
La Rioja	1.64	3.56	3.20	2.44	2.19	3.58

  Explanation of tables

The tables that are presented in this publication follow the European Union's methodology, which means that in order to use them correctly, the following features should be taken into account:

In the section "Industrial Plants" sugar beet is not included.

Fodder plants do not include fodder roots and tubers

In the watered area neither the greenhouse crops nor the kitchen gardens are included.