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QUALITY DECLARATION - SUMMARY

INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

For information on the institutional environment of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), including the legislative obligations of the ABS, financing and governance arrangements, and mechanisms for scrutiny of ABS operations, please see ABS Institutional Environment.

RELEVANCE

This product presents the gross value of agricultural commodities that are produced with the assistance of irrigation, The publication presents data on national, state and territory bases. Sub-state level data, including Natural Resource Management (NRM) region and the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) region, will be released in datacubes attached to the publication.

Gross Value of Irrigated Agricultural Production (GVIAP) estimates complement estimates contained in ABS Water Account, Australia (cat. no. 4610.0) which is produced annually.

TIMELINESS

These GVIAP estimates have been published within 13 months of the reference period and approximately three months after the release of the main value of agricultural production data in Value of Agricultural Commodities Produced, Australia (cat. no. 7503.0).

ACCURACY

Extensive editing of production and prices data and checking of resultant value estimates against earlier years and other relevant sources are used to ensure the accuracy of the estimates produced.

The accuracy of price data is ensured by the collection of price data from high-quality sources. Where a statutory authority handles marketing of the whole or a portion of a product, data are usually obtained from this source. Information is also obtained from marketing reports, wholesalers, brokers, dealers and auctioneers.

Production data are obtained from a range of high-quality sources, including ABS agricultural commodity collections and industry bodies.

All estimates in this publication are subject to sampling error. For more information about these errors, refer to the Explanatory Notes within this release.

COHERENCE

GVIAP is calculated for each irrigated 'commodity group' produced by agricultural businesses. That is, GVIAP is generally not calculated for individual commodities, but rather for groups of 'like' commodities, according to irrigated commodity groupings in the ABS Agricultural Census or Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodities Survey (REACS). The irrigated commodity groups may vary slightly on the survey forms from year-to-year; see the Appendix within this release for further information about the commodity groups used for this release.

The scope for the 2016-17 REACS was all agricultural businesses with an Estimated Value of Agricultural Operations (EVAO) of $40,000 or greater. This is a change from previous REACS collections, where a scope of EVAO of $5,000 or greater was used, and is a continuation of the revised scope used in the 2015-16 Agricultural Census. For more information about EVAO, refer to the Explanatory Notes within this release.

The scope change impacts all components of GVIAP. Where information is sourced from the REACS there will be an impact on estimates, including for crops and horticulture where production information is now only collected from businesses with a value of agricultural operations of $40,000 or greater.

As a result of the change in scope the 2016-17 GVIAP will not be directly comparable to GVIAP outputs published prior to 2015-16. To address this, additional estimates will be made available on request for a number of GVIAP releases from 2010-11 to 2014-15 using an EVAO of $40,000 or greater.

INTERPRETABILITY

This product provides a broad range of data about the value of irrigated agricultural commodities produced in Australia. Detailed explanatory notes are provided in this publication to assist users in determining and specifying their data requirements and to understand the concepts underlying the data.

The annual agricultural collections and five-yearly agricultural censuses provide a broad range of data about Australian agricultural commodities through a suite of standard products or as data customised for individual requirements. Estimates from these surveys are published on the ABS website. Detailed explanatory notes about these estimates are available in the following publications:

• Agricultural Commodities, Australia (cat. no. 7121.0)
• Value of Agricultural Commodities Produced, Australia (cat. no. 7503.0)
• Water Use on Australian Farms (cat. no. 4618.0)
• Land Management and Farming in Australia (cat. no. 4627.0)