Sample survey of agriculture and forestry

Updated: 14 March 2024

Next update: Not yet determined

Man hours per holding
Man hours per holding
2023
2 137
Labour input in agriculture
Labour input in agriculture
202020231 Change in percent
Labour input, 1000 man-hours2 82 53180 280-2.7
Agricultural holdings, number38 71337 561-3.0
Average labour input per holding, man-hours/holding2 1322 1370.3
1Figures for the most recent year is preliminary
2The labour input relates to the period from October 1. the year before until September 30.
Explanation of symbols

Selected tables and charts from this statistics

  • Labor input in agriculture and horticulture (1 000 man hours).
    Labor input in agriculture and horticulture (1 000 man hours).
    20231
    Labour input, totalExecuted by holders and spouses/cohabitantsExecuted by family membersExecuted by regular and not regularly employees
    Oslo and Viken11 3455 8948734 578
    Innlandet14 92410 1041 2293 592
    Vestfold og Telemark (2020-2023)4 6522 3703091 973
    Agder2 7861 916187683
    Rogaland11 7396 9271 1343 679
    Vestland10 7517 5291 1942 028
    Møre og Romsdal4 9153 472510933
    Trøndelag - Trööndelage11 9127 7441 2392 929
    Nordland - Nordlánnda4 6193 1513511 117
    Troms og Finnmark - Romsa ja Finnmárku (2020-2023)2 6371 797248591
    1Preliminary figures
    Explanation of symbols

About the statistics

The statistics give information about labour input and investments in agriculture.

Agricultural holding: All agricultural area operated by the same holder belongs to the same holding regardless of whether it includes several land numbers, title numbers and lease numbers.

Holder: The person(s) who is responsible for farming it.

Agricultural area in use: Comprises all owned and rented agricultural area in use at the holding, including fields that lie fallow a year. Agricultural areas include cultivated and surface-cultivated land, and other fertilized pastures.

Supplementary industry: An activity that uses the land, buildings or machinery belonging to the holding.

Standard output: The standard output (SO) for crop and livestock products is the regional average monetary value of the agricultural output at farm-gate price over a reference period of five years. The SO is excluded direct payments, value added tax and taxes on products.

Name: Sample survey of agriculture and forestry
Topic: Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing

Not yet determined

Division for Housing, Property, Spatial and Agricultural Statistics

Country, region or county.

Annual

Data are delivered to Eurostat by agreement.

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 purpose of the Survey of Agriculture is to obtain relevant data not found in administrative data systems, and to obtain data for units not covered by administrative systems.

The Survey of Agriculture is designed to form a picture of the agriculture industry in Norway (the number of holdings and properties) through various questions. The questions vary from year to year (labour, liabilities, investments, fixed assets, rental of agricultural land, farm buildings, extended forest survey etc.).

Data from the survey are used by professional organizations, the Budget Committee for Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Ministry of Environment, various research institutions such as the Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute and the Division for Environmental Statistics at Statistics Norway.

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.

Not relevant

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).

Not relevant

The population is based on active holdings from applications for Governmental grants and the administrative Farm Register of the Norwegian Agricultural Authority.

The majority of the data comes directly from respondents who fill out forms for the annual agricultural survey. The Agricultural Register provides information on the size of the agricultural and forest area, persons associated with the property/holding and what their association is with the property/holding.

Each year a sample is drawn for the Survey of Agriculture. The size of the sample varies between 5000 and 7000 active holdings, stratified by size and type of production in each county.

Letters are sent digitally to the holdings drawn for inclusion in the survey. The owner or holder of the property provides the data.

Editing is defined here as checking, examining and amending data. A number of controls and corrections are done to ensure consistency both on a single form and between forms and available register information.

The sample is stratified by location, size and farm type. A weight is calculted for each holding.

Not relevant

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.

To ensure confidentiality, the suppression method is used in these statistics.

The statistics are basically comparable back to the end of 1940th. However, for some variables there will be a break e.g. between 1998 and 1999. The reason for this is that the method used for estimating the number of holdings from 1990 to 1998 gradually led to too high figures. This was evidently shown by the results of the complete census of agriculture for 1999.

In 2007, the question related to supplementary industries was expanded. In addition to ticking off for relevant industry, the respondents were asked to fill in the corresponding gross income. This modification may have caused a somewhat higher item non-response.

Primary data are obtained from the forms filled out by the respondents. They may contain errors made by the individual respondents when he or she filled out the form. A number of errors are discovered and corrected by those who go through forms during the revision process at Statistics Norway.

A number of errors during the collection and processing of the data are unavoidable and include errors that occur during revision, data processing errors etc. Extensive work has been carried out to reduce these errors as much as possible.

Non-response in the survey is due to the failure of individual respondents to deliver questionnaires or that a property has been sold or is no longer farmed as an independent unit.

Variance: All sample surveys will be encumbered by a certain amount of uncertainty. Generally, the fewer the observations are, the more uncertain the results. Groups based on few observations will be particularly sensitive to extreme values, i.e. values that deviate considerably from the average. Such extreme values are consequently assigned a weight equal to 1, so that they only represent themselves in the material.

Bias: All types of holdings are included in the Survey of Agriculture sample. To provide a better representation in certain counties with few holdings a higher percentage of holdings are selected in these areas.

Frame errors: The quality of the register basis from which the sample is selected also has an impact on the quality of the final result.

Not relevant

Not relevant

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