Statistics Estonia

Economic and Environmental Statistics Department

Tatari 51, 10134 Tallinn, Estonia

The Economic Accounts for Agriculture (EAA) provide detailed information on income from agricultural activity.

The methods are laid down in the Regulation (EC) 138/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The EAA are an integral part of the ESA. As such, they are compiled based on NACE Rev.2, the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community. The list of activities which defines the agricultural industry corresponds, in principle, to Division 01 of that classification: Crop and animal production, hunting and related service activities. However, some differences exist and they are detailed in Annex 1 of Regulation (EC) 138/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

See the detail below.

See sheets 3.2.1.1.(a) to 3.2.1.1.(c) in the attached Excel file 'Annex 1 - Components of the Production account - Output' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheets 3.2.1.2 (a) to 3.2.1.2 (c) in the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 3.2.1.3 in the attached Excel file 'Annex 3 - Components of the Generation of income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 3.2.1.4 in the attached Excel file 'Annex 4 - Components of the Entrepreneurial income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 3.2.1.5 in the attached Excel file 'Annex 5 - Elements of the Capital account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

The sector covers all units involved in agricultural production, even if some of those units have more important economic activities or if the purpose of some others is not commercial. 

The list of agricultural activities characteristic of the EAA corresponds to the seven groups of Division 01 of NACE Rev 2 activities (01.1 to 01.7), with the following caveats:

- the inclusion of the production of wine and olive oil (exclusively using grapes and olives grown by the same holding),

- the exclusion of certain activities which, in NACE Rev. 2, are considered as agricultural services (e.g. the operation of irrigation systems - only agricultural contract work is taken into account here).

A detailed methodology can be found in Annex I of Regulation (EC) 138/2004.

The EAA are satellite accounts of the European System of Accounts (ESA) providing complementary information and concepts adapted to the particular nature of the agricultural industry.

The EAA are shown as a sequence of inter-related accounts. As the EAA are based on the industry concept, the sequence of accounts is limited to the first accounts of the current account:

- the production account and

- the generation-of-income account

whose balancing items are value added and operating surplus, respectively.

Nevertheless, it should be possible to compile other accounts, at least in part, in so far as the relevant flows can be clearly attributed to them. The accounts in question are the following:

- the entrepreneurial income account (one of the current accounts) and

- the capital account (one of the accumulation accounts).

The EAA provide a wide range of indicators on the economic activities in the agricultural sector: these include output, intermediate consumption, gross and net value added, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), both in current prices and in constant prices, as well as compensation of employees, other taxes and subsidies on production, net operating surplus or net mixed income, property income and net entrepreneurial income in current prices.

Three indicators of the economic performance of agriculture are defined in the EAA:

•Indicator A: Index of the real income of factors in agricultural per annual work unit.           
•Indicator B: Index of real net agricultural entrepreneurial income per unpaid annual work unit.          
•Indicator C: Net entrepreneurial income of agriculture.

Agricultural output is the total of agricultural products and the goods and services produced in inseparable non-agricultural secondary activities created during the accounting period. It is recorded as a resource in the production account and it is valued and recorded at the time it is generated, that is when produced and not when paid by the purchaser.

In the compilation of the EAA, output is progressively broken down in quantity terms (see paragraph 2.037 of Regulation (EC) 138/2004).

Output is valued at the basic price. The basic price is the price receivable by the producers from the purchaser for a unit of a good or service produced, minus any tax (i.e. taxes on products) payable on that unit plus any subsidy (i.e. subsidies on products) receivable on that unit. The basic price excludes any transport charges invoiced separately by the producer. It also excludes holding gains and losses on financial and non-financial assets.

The valuation of output at the basic price makes it necessary to distinguish between taxes (other than VAT) on products and subsidies on products, on the one hand, and other taxes and subsidies on production, on the other. 

Intermediate consumption represents the value of all goods and services used as inputs in the production process, excluding fixed assets whose consumption is recorded as fixed capital consumption.

The inputs used for intermediate consumption should be valued at the purchaser prices for similar goods and services applicable at the time of their insertion in the production process. The purchaser price includes taxes less subsidies on products (but excluding deductible taxes like VAT on the products). It also includes any transport charges paid separately by the purchaser to take delivery at the required time and place.

In the case of the generation of income account, the distributive transactions relate to other taxes on production, other subsidies on production and the compensation of employees.

For details please see sheet 3.4.3 - Other questions in the attached Excel file 'Annex 3 - Components of the Generation of income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

The entrepre­neurial income account records certain types of property income (mainly land rents, interest and property income attributed to insurance policy holders).

For details please see sheet 3.4.4 - Other questions in the attached Excel file 'Annex 4 - Components of the Entrepreneurial income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

In addition to Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), the capital account records distributive trans­actions corresponding to aid for investment and other capital transfers.

The overall unit is the agricultural sector. However, in order to provide more detailed information and to analyse flows generated by the production process and the use of goods and services, it is necessary to select units which emphasise relationships of a technical-economic kind. This means that, as a rule, institutional units must be broken-down into smaller and more homogeneous units with regard to the kind of production (local kind-of-activity units/local KAUs) are intended to meet this requirement (ESA 2010, 2.147).

The local KAU is defined as the part of a KAU which corresponds to a local unit. The institutional unit's information system must be capable of indicating or calculating for each local KAU at least the value of output, intermediate consumption, compensation of employees, the operating surplus and employment and gross fixed capital formation (ESA 2010, 2.148).

The agricultural holding, (the unit currently used for statistical studies of agriculture (censuses, surveys of the structure of agricultural holdings), is the local KAU most appropriate to the agricultural industry (even though certain other units, such as wine or olive oil cooperatives, or units performing contract work, etc., have to be included in it). Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the variety of agricultural activities that can be performed on agricultural holdings makes them a special type of local KAU. The strict application of the ESA rule to units and their group should in fact result in a division of the agricultural holding into several separate local KAUs in cases where several activities of the NACE Rev. 2 four-digit class are performed on the same holding.

Since the data are input to the national accounts, small agricultural units are also included in the Estonian Economic Accounts for Agriculture.

Although the ESA gives pre-eminence to local KAUs, the unit best suited to analyse the production process is the unit of homogeneous production (UHP). This unit is used to analyse inputs and outputs, since it corresponds exactly to a type of activity. Institutional units are thus divided into as many UHPs as there are activities (other than ancillary). By grouping these units of homogeneous production it is possible to break down the economy into 'pure' (homogeneous) branches. A UHP cannot, as a rule, be directly observed. Therefore, the accounts of homogeneous branches cannot be compiled on the basis of groups of UHPs. The ESA describes a method for compiling these accounts.

The use of the local KAU as the basic unit for the agricultural industry entails recording non-agricultural secondary activities where they cannot be distinguished from the main agricultural activity (inseparable non-agricultural secondary activities of local agricultural KAUs) The selection criterion for inseparable non-agricultural secondary activities is rather the type of activity than the nature of the product. For example, agro-tourism services provided by a farm must only be included if they cannot be separated from its agricultural activities.

Estonia as a whole

Economic Accounts for Agriculture 1995–…

Value, volume and price indices are calculated for reference year: n-1=100.

Accounts data – million euros
Agricultural labour input data – 1,000 AWUs

Year

EU legislation:

Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 December 2003 on the economic accounts for agriculture in the Community as amended

National legislation: Not available

In Estonia, the responsible body for official statistics is Statistics Estonia. According to the European Union Common Agricultural Policy Implementation Act, the first and second estimates are compiled by the Ministry of Rural Affairs and final data are compiled by Statistics Estonia.

The Agricultural Income Index has been compiled by Eurostat.

The EAA are compiled in close co-operation between Statistics Estonia and the Ministry of Rural Affairs.

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in sections 32, 34, 35, 38 of the Official Statistics Act.

The treatment of confidential data is regulated by the Procedure for Protection of Data Collected and Processed by Statistics Estonia (in Estonian). See more details on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section Legal acts.

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in sections 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 of the Official Statistics Act. Access to microdata and anonymisation of microdata are regulated by Statistics Estonia’s procedure for dissemination of confidential data for scientific purposes.

Not applicable

Notifications about the dissemination of statistics are published in the release calendar, which is available on the website. Every year on 1 October, the release times of the statistical database, news releases, main indicators by IMF SDDS and publications for the following year are announced in the release calendar (in the case of publications – the release month).

https://www.stat.ee/en/calendar

All users have been granted equal access to official statistics: the dissemination dates of official statistics are announced in advance and no user category (incl. Eurostat, state authorities and mass media) is provided access to official statistics before other users. Official statistics are first published in the statistical database. If there is also a news release, it is published simultaneously with the release of data in the statistical database. Official statistics are available on the website at 8:00 a.m. on the date announced in the release calendar.

Annual; two estimates and final data are published.

Not published

Not published

The data are published in the statistical database at https://andmed.stat.ee/en/stat under the subject area “Economy / Agriculture / Economic accounts for agriculture” in the following tables:

PM54: Agricultural output, intermediate consumption, value added, gross fixed capital formation in basic prices of the corresponding year and agricultural labour input

PM55: Agricultural output, intermediate consumption, value added and gross fixed capital formation in basic prices of the previous year

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in sections 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 of the Official Statistics Act. Access to microdata and anonymisation of microdata are regulated by Statistics Estonia’s procedure for dissemination of confidential data for scientific purposes.

The data serve as input for statistical activities 21303 “Government finance”, 21408 “Supply and use tables”, 21401 “National accounts (annual)”, 21405 “National accounts (quarterly)”, 20405 “Agricultural input price index”, 20406 “Agricultural output price index” and 21213 “Supply balance sheets of agricultural products”.

Eurostat's manuals for Economic Accounts for Agriculture

Metadata are published at https://www.stat.ee/en/find-statistics/methodology-and-quality/esms-metadata/21207.

The quality report submitted to Eurostat.

To assure the quality of processes and products, Statistics Estonia applies the EFQM Excellence Model, the European Statistics Code of Practice and the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (ESS QAF). Statistics Estonia is also guided by the requirements in section 7, “Principles and quality criteria of producing official statistics”, of the Official Statistics Act.

Statistics Estonia performs all statistical activities according to an international model (Generic Statistical Business Process Model – GSBPM). According to the GSBPM, the final phase of statistical activities is overall evaluation using information gathered in each phase or sub-process; this information can take many forms, including feedback from users, process metadata, system metrics and suggestions from employees. This information is used to prepare the evaluation report which outlines all the quality problems related to the specific statistical activity and serves as input for improvement actions.

Ministry of Rural Affairs

Since 1996, Statistics Estonia has conducted reputation and user satisfaction surveys. All results are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section User surveys.

In compliance with the rules (regulations).

Not applicable to EAA compilation.

Not applicable to EAA compilation.

Not applicable to EAA compilation.

Final data are published T+9. First estimates are published in November N and second estimates T+1.

The data have been published at the time announced in the release calendar.

The data are comparable to the data of other Member States of the European Union because a common methodology is used.

Agricultural income indicators are comparable over time.

As the input data for economic accounts for agriculture are data of other agricultural statistics activities, the accounts are coherent with other agricultural statistics. The yield/output data are derived from agricultural production statistics, and labour force data from the Farm Structure Survey and economic indicators of agricultural holdings. In addition, prices are based on price statistics, exports on foreign trade statistics, intermediate consumption and other costs on economic indicators of agricultural holdings, depreciation and capital investment on macroeconomic statistics, and subsidies on data of the Agricultural Registers and Information Board (ARIB) via the Ministry of Rural Affairs.

Not applicable

The EAA use inputs from National Accounts (fixed capital consumption, gross fixed capital formation, FISIM) and are also input for both "National accounts (annual)" and "National accounts (quarterly)".

The outputs of the statistical activity are coherent. Higher-level aggregations are derived from detailed data according to pre-defined procedures. Agricultural income figures are calculated.

In the EAA, mainly data from other statistical activities and administrative sources are used. Therefore, it is not possible to reliably estimate the related burden caused by the questionnaires. Costs related to EAA calculations have been estimated at approximately 56 thousand euros (2021).

The data revision policy and notification of corrections are described in the section Principles of dissemination of official statistics on the website of Statistics Estonia.

The published data may be revised if the methodology is modified, errors are discovered, new or better data become available.

The EAA revision policy is under construction and will follow relevant policy at EU level.

The EAA revision policy is under construction and will follow relevant policy at EU level.

See sheet 18.1.1 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 1 - Components of the Production account - Output' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

For detailed explanations on data sources used, please see remarks under concept 18.1.3.

See sheet 18.1.3 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.1.4 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 3 - Components of the Generation of income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.1.5 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 4 - Components of the Entrepreneurial income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheets 18.1.6 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 5 - Elements of the Capital account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

Final data are published T+9 months in year N+1. First estimates are published in November N and second estimates T+1 month in year N+1.

Update in September of year n for the year n-1. Previous years may be updated if the methodology is modified, errors are discovered, new or better data become available.

In the EAA, mainly data from other statistical activities and administrative sources are used. These data are used as aggregate data. Additional data are collected only about amounts of purchased agricultural products - from enterprises engaged in purchasing, with the annual official statistics questionnaire "Purchases of crop products". 

Arithmetic and qualitative controls are used in the validation process, including comparison with other data.

The collected data are converted into statistical output. This includes calculating additional indicators.

Gross value added is calculated on the basis of the output of the agricultural industry and total intermediate consumption. Gross value added is the basis for calculating all other agricultural income indicators.

See sheet 18.5.1.1 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 1 - Components of the Production account - Output' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See also Excel file 'Annex 6 - Calculation methods output'.

See sheet 18.5.1.2 (a) and 18.5.1.2 (b) of the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.1.3 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 3 - Components of the Generation of income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.1.4 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 4 - Components of the Entrepreneurial income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheets 18.5.1.5 of 'Annex 5 - Elements of the Capital account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheets 18.5.2.1 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 1 - Components of the Production account - Output' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.2.2 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.2.3 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 3 - Components of the Generation of income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.2.4 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 4 - Components of the Entrepreneurial income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.2.5 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 5 - Elements of the Capital account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file. 

See the attached Excel file 'Annex 7 - Numerical examples' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See the attached Excel file 'Annex 7 - Numerical examples' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See the attached Excel file 'Annex 7 - Numerical examples' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See the attached Excel file 'Annex 7 - Numerical examples' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See the attached Excel file 'Annex 7 - Numerical examples' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.4.1 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 1 - Components of the Production account - Output' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.4.2 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.5.5 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

Calculation of compensation of VAT on Other taxes on production: Not applicable

Calculation of compensation of VAT on Other subsidies on production: Not applicable

See sheet 18.6.1 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 1 - Components of the Production account - Output' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.6.2 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 2 - Components of the Production account - Intermediate consumption' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.6.3 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 3 - Components of the Generation of income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.6.4 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 4 - Components of the Entrepreneurial income account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

See sheet 18.6.5 of the attached Excel file 'Annex 5 - Elements of the capital account' in the section Annexes at the end of the file.

List of abbreviations:

EAA – Economic Accounts for Agriculture