Accounts Statistics for Agriculture

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Food Industries, Business Statistics
Henrik Bolding Pedersen
+45 20 57 88 87

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Accounts Statistics for Agriculture 2023

The purpose of the accounts statistics is to analyze the economics in agriculture including horticulture. Agriculture is divided into conventional and organic farms.

In addition to this, accounts statistics also constitute a substantial input for compiling the national accounts and for EU's information network for Agricultural Book-Keeping, INLB.

The accounts statistics for agriculture, horticulture and organic farming have been calculated, respectively since 1916, 1980 and 1996. The present form of the statistics has been calculated since 2008.

Statistical presentation

The statistics analyze the profit and loss accounts, balance and investments at the level of farms (enterprise level). The primary statistical data contain detailed accounts items, including items for turnover, purchases, costs, operating result of the year, assets, liabilities and investments. In addition to this, the personal finances of the households are analyzed, as information on income outside of agriculture, paid taxes and private consumption are available for some farms. The farms are broken down by full-time and part-time farms as well as types of farming.

Statistical processing

The data material is gathered from accounting offices organized in the Danish Agriculture and Food Council and private auditors by using electronic data collection and questionnaires. The data is classified by the economic size is made on the basis of the total standard output (SO) of each individual farm. The SO is calculated for all types of crops and species of livestock as an average of the actual outputs (correspond to the Gross Output) per hectare or per animal in a reference period of 5 years. Data is checked and validated and afterwards the sample are weighted to the population.

Relevance

These statistics are relevant to Ministries, researchers and agricultural organizations to measure the income of agricultural holdings. The collections of data also meets the Danish obligations towards the European Union's Farm Accountancy Data Network, FADN.

Accuracy and reliability

The statistics are compiled on a sample population and consequently, the results are subject to some degree of uncertainty. The sample is stratified with the aim of being representative for all farms. From the population of small farms, where the variation is small, a relatively small sample is selected, while from the population of large farms a larger sample is used. Loss of sample farms are countered by higher selection rates in strata where losses do occur (based on experience).

Timeliness and punctuality

The final statistics are published before 1st of October in the year after the accounting year while preliminary data for agriculture are published in the beginning of July.

Comparability

The statistics are comparable back to 2008, where data have been calculated on the basis of Standard Output.

The statistics are partly comparable with data from SEGES (Danish agricultural advisory service), which compiles economic key figures for different types of farming. A coordination of the concepts is conducted.

Accessibility and clarity

The figures are published in Nyt from Danmarks Statistik. The statistics is published in StatBank Denmark under Agricultural accounts statistics. Furthermore the numbers are published in an annual publicationpublication on agricultural accounts statistics. More information is available on the statistics subject page.