Since 2001, Farm Structure Surveys have been conducted according to the EU legislation.

There is no special national legal act for FSS. The legal basis is the Official Statistics Act, just as in the case of other statistical surveys. 

The respondents are required to answer all questions and give true and complete answers. 

ARIB – Agricultural Registers and Information Board

CATI – Computer Assisted Telephone Interview

Agricultural holding – a unit with single technical and financial management which produces agricultural products or maintains its land in good agricultural and environmental condition and where:

- there is at least one hectare of utilised agricultural land or

- there is less than one hectare of utilised agricultural land and agricultural products are produced mainly for sale.

In the case of holdings with less than one hectare of utilised agricultural area, the physical threshold was used to determine potential holdings producing mainly for sale. The physical thresholds are in accordance with the thresholds specified in Annex II of Regulation (EC) No 1166/2008 but are lower.

Units where agricultural products are not produced but only land is maintained in good agricultural and environmental condition, even if they do not have other agricultural activity, are included from 2007.

In the case of holdings with less than one hectare of utilised agricultural area, the physical threshold was used in order to determine potential holdings producing mainly for sale. The threshold was as follows: At least:
- 3 cattle (C2$heads);
- 10 pigs (C4$heads), sheep (C3_1$heads) or goats (C3_2$heads);
- 10 swarms of bees (C_7$hives);
- 100 heads of poultry (C_5$heads);
- 0.5 ha of fruit and berry plantations (B_4_1$ha);
- 0.3 ha of fresh vegetables (B_1_7_1$ha+B_1_7_2$ha);
- 0.2 ha of nursery (B_4_5$ha);
- 0.01 ha of outdoor flowers (B_1_8_1$ha), crops under glass (B_1_7_2$ha+B_1_8_2$ha) or arable land seeds (B_1_10$ha).
The physical threshold was used if there was no information about products produced for sale, i.e. only for targeting holdings that are producing mainly for sale.

All holdings that have a utilised agricultural area above the threshold are eligible holdings, even if the entire utilised agricultural area is permanent grassland that is temporarily not used for production purposes but maintained in good agricultural and environmental condition (and is eligible for financial supports). Thus, they had to be included in the survey.

The main location of the holding is the location of the holding’s centre (the location of the major part of the land, if there is no centre). The holding’s centre is the holder’s place of residence or the location of the holding’s buildings on the holding’s land. If the office or the holder’s residence lies more than 5 kilometres from the place of main activity, it cannot be considered as the reference place.

• for land characteristics – 12 months ending on the reference day 01.09.2016;
• for livestock characteristics – the reference day was 01.09.2016;
• for labour force characteristics – 12 months ending on the reference day 01.09.2016;
• for rural development measures – the reference period was 01.01.2014–31.12.2016.

Calendar (overview of work progress)

1) Register of Agricultural Support and Agricultural Parcels (together with annual land use data);
2) Register of Agricultural Animals;
3) Organic Farming Register;
4) Business Register for Statistical Purposes of Statistics Estonia (frame for business statistics; it is based on the Commercial Register, the Non-Profit Institutions and Foundations Register, the Register of Taxable Persons and the State Register of State and Local Government Agencies);
5) Population Register;
6) data received from official agricultural statistics surveys. 
On the basis of these sources, several data items are regularly updated in the statistical Farm Register. The registers are also used as sources for adding new holdings.

2) Register of Agricultural Animals (the Bovine Register)
The main legal act is the Infectious Animal Disease Control Act. The data are continuously updated. The data on livestock used in the survey refer to the survey reference date. Data about livestock were used for prefilling and holders could correct their data if needed. 

3) Organic Farming Register 
The main legal act is EC No 834/2007 on the EU level and the Organic Farming Act on the national level. The data are continuously updated. The data used refer to 2016. As the data on animals refer to the day of inspection, they are adapted to the survey reference date. The number of animals was updated for the reference date on the basis of survey data. A comparison was made between the number of all animals specified in the questionnaire and the number of animals according to the data received from the Organic Farming Register (the latter divides animals into the following categories: kept as “normal”, under conversion or fully organic). Due to the requirements for organic production, the animals of a particular species and age group can only be organic or non-organic, but not both at the same time.

4) Database of Certified Seed Producers

The main legal act is the Plant Propagation and Plant Variety Rights Act. The data are continuously updated. The data used refer to 2016. The initial data on seed production refer to the day of application and the final data refer to the inspection date. Data about seeds were used for prefilling and holders could correct their data if needed.

5) Land Cadastre of Land Board

The main legal act is Land Cadastre Act. The data are continuosly updated. The data used refer to 2016. Data about wooded area and other land were used for prefilling and holders could correct their data if needed.

6) Statistical Register of Agricultural Holdings (Farm Register)

The main legal Act is Official Statistics Act. The data are continuosly updated. The data refer to the survey reference date.

Statistics Estonia has agreed the land use classification scheme with the IACS register but has not participated in other conceptual design (characteristics, definitions, classifications, formats, etc.) and has not done subsequent related revisions of the administrative sources.

Register of Agricultural Animals - natural and legal persons who own agricultural animals.

Organic Farming Register - natural and legal persons engaged in organic production.

Database of Certified Seed Producers - natural and legal persons who grow seeds and want the relevant fields to be certified.

Land Cadastre of Land Board - natural and legal persons whose lands are registered in the Land Cadastre. 

Statistical Register of Agricultural Holdings (Farm Register) - agricultural holdings.

Data are matched through ID code in IACS and Register of Agricultural Animals, ID code in Organic Farming Register, business register code and personal identification code.

In case of a census 1=3+4+5

Only for sample survey, in which case 2=3+4+5

This item is a subset of 3.

4>4.1+4.2

5=5.1+5.2

5.1>=5.1.1+5.1.2

6=5.2+5.1.2+4.2

The tools used for data validation were the electronic questionnaire which included arithmetical and logical controls (Internet and CATI versions) and a special data processing program.

Data validation was done on several levels – holders filling in online questionnaires, telephone interviewers, instructors and finally data processors.

However, measurement errors may occur in the case of some indicators that are not verifiable by administrative and other sources (see 6.3.2 Measurement error manure export).

To correct over-coverage and prevent over-estimation of the number of holdings and other characteristics, recomputing of the design weights for the sampled units (by considering a corrected population) is undertaken.

Information about other major measurement errors is not known. The questionnaires were carefully designed, they were in electronic format and included several arithmetical and logical checks. A part of the information was collected by trained interviewers.  

Unit non-response was small and there were no strata with much larger non-response than the average. Therefore, the results of FSS 2016 can be regarded as good.

43 holdings had in their questionnaires only prefilled administrative data and their all other data can be regarded as item non-responses. In case of item non-responses, the data of the Farm Structure Survey 2013 or Agricultural Census 2010 were used for imputation. If these data were missing, the hot-deck imputation (nearest neighbour) method was used for imputation.

There were no holdings within the totally surveyed stratum for which data were missing (including utilised agricultural area and livestock data from administrative sources). There were cases when the holding accepted the administrative data but did not give further information, but this is not unit non-response and has been treated as item non-response. Therefore, unit non-response within the eligible units is 0.

43 holdings had in their questionnaires only prefilled administrative data and their all other data can be regarded as item non-responses. So, the highest item non-response rates were 0.7% (for the data of manager, for example). Some other examples: 0.3% for full time regular male and female employees, 0.6% for crop rotation and up to 0.5% for soil cover.

Administrative data were also used, if available – these were mostly used to prefill the questionnaires, but there were cases when the relevant administrative data for some units were received later. 

Therefore, the imputation rates are the same as the item non-response rates presented in item 6.3.3.2 Item non-response error.

The differences between microdata were clarified and also corrected, if needed. The differences occurred due to differences in definitions, units and methodology.  

The final results were published on 16 October 2017. 

Scientists can, under special contracts, use confidential microdata for research purposes at the safe centre on Statistics Estonia's premises or through remote access. They can make the analysis but only an employee of Statistics Estonia can send the research results to the user's e-mail address after the disclosure control has been performed. 

In order to reduce costs, all holdings could provide their data electronically. In order to reduce the burden, administrative data were used as much as possible. 

The treatment of confidential data is regulated by the Procedure for Protection of Data Collected and Processed by Statistics Estonia: http://www.stat.ee/dokumendid/19410.

The producer of official statistics disseminates data collected for the production of official statistics for public use only in a form that precludes the possibility of direct or indirect identification of a statistical unit.