Farm Structure Survey

Contact info

Business statistics, Agriculture
Karsten Larsen
+45 39 17 33 78

Get documentation of statistics as pdf

Agricultural and Horticultural Survey 2023

The purpose of the survey is to describe the structure of agriculture, e.g. number of farms by size and geography.

The statistics have comparable time series going back to 1982. The agricultural statistics, however, are much older than that with figures for number of farms, livestock, crops etc. going back to around 1900.

Statistical presentation

The farm structure statistics are yearly and include figures on number of farms, livestock and crops distributed by for instance size and geography.

Statistical processing

The information is collected by means of a yearly questionnaire based survey where the farmers complete the questionnaire online. The answers are validated for non probable values.

Information on crops and cattle is collected from registers, and is thereby not reported by every single farmer.

The survey is a sample survey stratified by region, size and type of farming.

Relevance

The statistics fulfill a need for structural information on the Danish agriculture, e.g. number of farms by size and region. Important users are EU, the ministries and agricultural organizations.

Accuracy and reliability

The precision varies for the different items of the statistics. The precision is thus highest for the total agricultural area and less precise for specific crops, especially crops grown by only few farmers. Likewise the precision is best for livestock which many farmers have. This is in particular true for cattle. In the same way the uncertainty is high for small geographical units, e.g. Bornholm.

Timeliness and punctuality

The survey is published about 9-12 after the survey day. This difference is due to the fact that survey varies in size from year to year, both with respect to the questionnaire and the sample size.

Comparability

The survey is almost comparable from 1982 onwards. There is also a high degree of comparability with other European countries. Between 2009 and 2010 there is, however, a small break in the comparability since the statistics from 2010 onwards includes a number of small farms and additionally farms with fur animals. It means that the number of farms in 2010 is about 1.200 bigger than it otherwise would have been.

From around 1900 to 1981 the statistical surveys also included very small farms with an area of only hectares. These figures are available for the users in paper publications, but not online.

Accessibility and clarity

The survey is published here: Online, http://www.Statbank.dk, New from Statistics Denmark, Statistical ten years review, and in the analyses of Statistics Denmark, see this analyse on [Analyse]https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/Analyser/visanalyse?cid=29376