Agricultural properties

Name: Agricultural properties
Topic: Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing

Division for Housing, Property, Spatial and Agricultural Statistics

County and municipality.

Annually.

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

The statistics describes buildings, habitation and areas on agricultural properties. The statistics also give information about the owners of the properties and theirs business.

Users include public and private sector agencies, organizations and individuals.

No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the release calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.

Forestry, structural statistics comprise forestry properties with at least 25 decares productive forest area while Agriculture, structural statistics comprise agricultural holdings.

The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).

Including 2010, the statistics comprise properties in the Farm Register of the Norwegian Agricultural Authority with at least 5 decares owned agricultural area and/or at least 25 decares productive forest area. As from 2012 the statistics are based on new cartographic data analyses and data on owners and properties from the cadastre in combination with data from the Farm register. Figured for 2011 are not published.

Information on property owners and inhabitants refers to the status on 1 January.

It may be difficult to decide whether a property is an agricultural property or not. As from 2022 we have taken in use a more consistant way to include properties found in cartographic data analysis which is not registered in the Farm register.

The Farm Register of the Norwegian Agricultural Authority serves as the backbone of the statistics. The information from the Farm Register is combined with information at property level from different data sources like the Property Register, the Central Population register, the Cultural Heritage Register (SEFRAK) and SSB’s population of agricultural holdings.

All data are collected from administrative registers.

Data are checked by various machine controls.

Employees of Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures if there is a risk of the respondent’s contribution being identified. This means that, as a general rule, figures are not published if fewer than three units form the basis of a cell in a table or if the contribution of one or two respondents constitutes a very large part of the cell total.

Statistics Norway can make exceptions to the general rule if deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the EEA agreement, if the respondent is a public authority, if the respondent has consented to this, or when the information disclosed is openly accessible to the public.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

In 2006, the statistics were published for the first time. Corresponding statistic are worked out for 2000 . When comparing data from 2000 with data from 2006 and later, improved quality of the registers and different demarcation of the population may influence the statistics at municipality level.

In 2000, one of the indicators was "Inhabited on agricultural properties with building". From 2006 this was changed to" Inhabited on agricultural properties with dwelling house".

Introduction of property tax in some municipalities may cause changes in the classification of buildings by type of building. In special, holiday homes encoded as farmhose or detached house will influence on the share of properties with dwelling house.

A quality improvement of areas and units in the Farm Register is carried out at municipality level. For some municipalities this resulted in considerable changes from one year to another.

As from 2007 information about registered owner of agricultural properties comes from the Cadastral System (Matrikkelen). More than 30 000 agricultural properties have more than one owner. In that cases, the owner with the largest share is choosen. If the share is equal, the oldest owner is choosen.

In 2024, the methodology for determining the number of residents on agricultural properties was revised. As a result, fewer properties are now classified as inhabited, while the number of residents per property has increased. Enhanced data quality in both the National Population Register and the Property Register (formerly the Cadastre) has made it possible to use these registers more accurately to determine individuals’ places of residence. Previously, when multiple families were registered at the same dwelling, they were reassigned to other dwellings on the same property or to other properties with the same cadastral number. This practice led to a larger number of properties being classified as inhabited.

Before 2007, information of owners comes from the Farm Register. In some cases a contact person or a management company are registered as the property owner in that register. It is not clear in what way the information about the owner are treated when only a part of the property is sold.

The methodology for calculating construction activity was changed in 2024. As a result, the proportion of agricultural properties reporting construction activity has increased, and the figures are therefore not directly comparable with those from previous years.

Buildings registered without the need for application, after the introduction of the data register Matrikkelen in 2008, have to varying degrees been registered with all necessary information. In 2008 and 2009, this in turn has led to an underestimation of buildings in the agricultural sector. In 2010, 5000-6000 buildings were registered without need of application.

As from 2012, the number of forest properties and productive forest area are based on new cartographic data analyses and data on owners and properties from the cadastre in combination with data from the Farm register.

Errors may arise when data are entered into the various administrative registers.

A concern is the quality of the Farm Register. The productive forest area of the properties is sometimes missing or erroneous. We also believe that some small properties without buildings and entrepreneurial activity may lack in the register.'

Even though the registers have good quality, some errors could occur due to late or missing updating and classification errors. For instance, an agricultural property may contain a cadastral unit recently transferred to non-agricultural use. For instance, nursing homes and rental housing may be counted together with an agricultural property.

In that cases the number of inhabited will be corrected on cadstral level. Cadastral units with buildings as nursing homes, retirement homes, block of flats etc, or with buildings with more than six residences, the number of inhabited are corrected. In total, 19 000 persons are taken away from the agricultural properties.

The main concern is the quality of productive forest area. In the cadastre, 920 000 decares productive forest area are not linked to a title number of a holding number, and will not be included in the statistics.