Census of Agriculture

Census of Agriculture
Summary of changes
Other reference periods
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Detailed information for 2011

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Every 5 years

Record number:

3438

The Census of Agriculture is conducted to develop a statistical portrait of Canada's farms and its agricultural operators.

Data release - May 10, 2012 (first in a series of releases)

Description

Statistics Canada conducts the Census of Agriculture to develop a statistical portrait of Canada's farms and its agricultural operators. The data provide users with a comprehensive picture of the major commodities of the agriculture industry while also supplying information on new or less common crops, livestock, finances and use of technology.

The data collected by the Census of Agriculture are used to calculate estimates and determine the sample frame for the agricultural surveys. The information is also used by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and provincial governments to develop, administer and evaluate agricultural policies, and by universities and agri-businesses for research and planning.

The census takes place every five years as decreed by The Statistics Act. It provides a historical perspective on Canadian agriculture and on trends in the industry over the years.

Clients: Federal government, provincial and territorial governments, municipal governments; libraries; educational institutions; researchers and academics; private industry; business associations and labour organizations; private citizens; public interest groups.

Reference period: The reference period for the Census of Agriculture data varies with the variable under consideration. The most common reference periods include the previous calendar year and census day (second Tuesday of May).

Subjects

  • Agriculture and food (formerly Agriculture)

Data sources and methodology

Target population

All agriculture operations in Canada.

Instrument design

Although the questionnaire is updated every census to reflect data users' changing requirements as identified through the Canada-wide workshops, certain basic or core questions appear on every census. These questions - such as those on farm operator name, land area, livestock numbers and crop areas - are considered essential by Statistics Canada and other major users of Census of Agriculture data. Repeating basic questions allows the census to measure change over time, while adding new questions and dropping others allows data to be collected that reflect new technologies and structural changes in the agriculture industry. For example a question has been added to request the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) Business Number for the agricultural operation. In addition, a brief explanation of the intent of this question has been added to the back cover of the questionnaire. Using these data, a pilot project will evaluate the feasibility of replacing the financial information asked in Step 32 with CRA tax data, which could significantly reduce the response burden for farmers. A new step has been added to request the area from which crop residue was baled. This is an environmentally relevant question, as crop residue management affects erosion rates, contamination of surface and groundwater, greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon sequestration.

New or changed questions were developed in head office and tested a number of times with farm operators across Canada through one-on-one interviews on their farms and in focus groups. Farm operators selected for testing reflected regional diversity - in types of agriculture, production techniques, languages and terminology, and in policies or issues that could affect the sensitivity of questions. This testing proved that some questions would not perform well on the census, and that the wording of other questions would require fine-tuning. Respondent burden, content testing results, user priorities and budgets were all taken into consideration in determining the final content of the 2011 Census of Agriculture questionnaire. It was approved by Cabinet in the spring of 2010.

Sampling

This survey is a census with a cross-sectional design.

The Census of Agriculture is designed to obtain complete and accurate data from all farms in Canada. Data are collected for all units of the target population, therefore no sampling is done.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2011-05-10 to 2011-09-30

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

The Census of Agriculture is collected with the Census of Population (record number 3901). In 2011, all farm operations will receive their questionnaires by mail through Canada Post rather than through a local enumerator. Farm operators will either mail back the form directly to Statistics Canada in the National Capital Region or complete and submit an electronic form on the Internet.

The information on the questionnaires is converted to machine-readable form and checked for consistency. The final data are analysed for accuracy and summarized for public release. The reference period for the Census of Agriculture data varies with the variable under consideration. The most common reference periods include the previous calendar year (e.g. value of agricultural products sold) and census day (e.g. number of livestock on the operation).

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Error detection

The data are first subjected to many rigorous quality control and processing edits to identify and resolve problems related to inaccurate, missing or inconsistent data.

Questionnaires with missing or inconsistent data may be followed up with a telephone call from a census employee from Statistics Canada asking a short series of questions to clear up any missing or incomplete answers.

Imputation

Some records in a Census will be incomplete or inconsistent and will require imputation. Where a follow-up phone call with respondents is unsuccessful in obtaining missing information or resolving data inconsistencies, an automated imputation procedure is used. Where possible, incomplete or inconsistent records receive substitute values derived from other information on the record. In cases of total non-response and for data that cannot be derived from the incomplete record, a process of selecting suitable data from "nearest neighbour" records is used. The system searches for another operation with similar characteristics and within the same geographic area as the questionnaire with the problem. Once a suitable match is made the system duplicates the donor's responses in the recipient questionnaire.

Estimation

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.

Data accuracy

An integral part of each Census of Agriculture is the implementation of new or enhanced methods, procedures and technologies that improve not only the collection, but also the processing, validation and dissemination of the data. New methods, procedures and technologies adopted for the 2011 Census of Agriculture included significant updates to the Statistics Canada Farm Register in preparation of the Census, mailing questionnaires to the entire farm population with a recognized mailing address and an enhanced centralized telephone follow-up operation to resolve non-response as well as inconsistencies within questionnaires returned by respondents. In addition, to help ensure that data from the 2011 Census of Agriculture would be of consistently high quality, improved quality assurance and control procedures were incorporated into each of the collection and data processing stages.

Primarily as a result of adopting these methods, procedures and technologies, the 2011 Census of Agriculture data are of very good quality, with data for the major commodities being of the highest quality. A response rate of 95.9% and an estimated 1.8% undercoverage rate of farms indicate the overall success of the 2011 Census of Agriculture. Note that close to half of the estimated undercoverage was of farms with sales below $10,000 in 2010. As a result, the undercoverage rate for major commodities is below 1%.

With projects as large and complex as the Censuses of Agriculture and Population, the estimates produced from them are inevitably subject to a certain degree of error. Knowing the types of errors that can occur and how they affect specific variables can help users assess the data's usefulness for their particular applications as well as assess the risks involved in basing conclusions or decisions on them.

Errors can arise at virtually every stage of the census process, from preparing materials, through collecting data, to processing. Moreover, errors may be more predominant in certain areas of the country or vary according to the characteristic being measured. Some errors occur at random, and when individual responses are aggregated for a sufficiently large group they tend to cancel each other out. For errors of this nature, the larger the group, the more accurate the corresponding estimate. For this reason, data users are advised to be cautious when using estimates based on a small number of responses. Some errors, however, might occur more systematically and result in "biased" estimates. Because the bias from such errors is persistent no matter how large the group for which responses are aggregated, and because bias is particularly difficult to measure, systematic errors are a more serious problem for most data users than random errors.

Documentation

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