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
Final estimates from the 2015–16 Land Management Practices Survey will be presented in Land Management and Farming in Australia (cat. no. 4627.0). This publication provides information on a variety of management practices being adopted by Australian agricultural businesses including cropping and pasture management, soil management and fertiliser use. Data are presented at the national, state and territory and Australian Agricultural Environment (AAE) region levels.
TIMELINESS
Land Management and Farming in Australia (cat. no. 4627.0) will be released 23 August 2017, approximately 13 months from the end of the survey's reference period.
ACCURACY
Data from the 2015–16 Land Management Practices Survey are based on the achieved target response rate of 86.4% and have been extensively quality assured. The resultant estimates have been checked against earlier years' estimates and relevant other sources, to ensure the accuracy of estimates produced.
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
The 2015-16 Land Management Practices Survey was conducted using a frame based on the Australian Business Register (ABR). This is the same as the frame used for the 2010-11 Agricultural Census, subsequent annual agricultural surveys, and for the 2015-16 Agricultural Census.
For the purposes of this collection a business (statistical unit) is identified as undertaking agricultural activity if any of the primary or secondary productive activities of that business fall with the Agriculture Subdivision (Subdivision 01) as defined by the 2006 edition of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC). For more information, please refer to Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC), 2006 (cat. no. 1292.0).
The scope for the 2015-16 Land Management Practices Survey and 2015-16 Agricultural Census was all agricultural businesses with an EVAO of $40,000 or greater. This is a change from previous ABS Rural Environment and Agricultural Collections, where a scope of EVAO of $5,000 or greater was used. The change in scope better aligns these collections with contemporary definitions of an agricultural business and reduces the overall reporting load for smaller agricultural businesses. Only agricultural businesses with an EVAO of $40,000 or greater will be in scope for ABS rural environmental and agricultural commodity collections in 2016-17 and beyond. More information on the change in scope can be found in the publication Agricultural Census: Nature and Content, 2015-16 (cat. no 7100.1) and in the Explanatory Notes within this release.
As a result of the change in scope, the estimates from the 2015-16 Land Management Practices Survey will not be directly comparable to previous published Land Management Practices Survey or annual Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodity Survey outputs. To address this, additional estimates have been produced from a number of rural environment and agricultural commodity collections from 2010-11 to 2014-15, using an EVAO of $40,000 or greater. These estimates are now available at the national, state/territory levels and sub-state levels on the ABS website.
INTERPRETABILITY
The Land Management Practices Survey, Agricultural Census and the Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodities Survey provide a broad range of data about Australian agricultural commodities and land management practices on Australian farms through a suite of standard products or as data customised for individual requirements. Time series data are available for some estimates that were collected through previous surveys/censuses. Detailed explanatory notes are provided with each publication to assist users in determining and specifying their data requirements and to understand the concepts underlying the data.
ACCESSIBILITY
An extensive range of data is available from a variety of agriculture-based collections on the ABS website.
If the information you require is not available as a standard product or service, the ABS Consultancy Services can assist with customised services to suit your requirements. Inquiries should be made to the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.
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