Use of farm business registries to build a frame for agricultural censuses and surveys The Australian experience

1. Use of farm business registries to build a frame for agricultural censuses and surveysThe Australian experience Peter Harper Australian Bureau of Statistics ISI Satellite Meeting on Agricultural Statistics Maputo, Mozambique 13-14 August 2009

2. Acknowledgement • Paper prepared by Karen Connaughton and Jason Featherstone, ABS

3. Background • Agriculture is an historically important industry in Australia • Agricultural censuses conducted annually from 1860s to mid 1990s • In 1997-98 a program of five-yearly censuses and annual surveys in intervening years was introduced • Censuses and surveys conducted using a mail-out/mail-back form • Prior to the 2005-06 Census, collections were based on a list frame maintained by ABS • Deterioration in the coverage of the frame, along with an expansion of collections to cover natural resource management issues, led the ABS to consider alternative survey frame approaches

4. Population frame options • Considerable research and consultation was undertaken • This included a review of the Australian agricultural program by Fred Vogel, which recommended an area-based frame • However, cost of setting up area-based frame was prohibitive • The alternative was a frame based on the Australian Business Register, which is maintained by the Australian Taxation Office

5. The ABR • Implemented in 2000, as part of the introduction of the GST • Covers all businesses operating in Australia registered for GST • Includes unique reference number, name, address, industry, size and activity information • By 2004, the ABR was being used as the basis of the frame for most ABS economic surveys • After conducting a coverage survey to assess the ABR frame, the ABS decided to move to an ABR-based frame for the 2005-06 Agricultural Census

6. Activity-based frame • ABR can provide information on businesses that are in the agricultural industry (primary activity) or that have agriculture as a secondary activity • 400,000 businesses were initially in scope • An exercise was undertaken to remove out of scope units and ‘multiple’ units • This left 190,000 units • As part of the processing of the 2005-06 Agriculture Census this was further reduced to 155,000 units (compared to 130,000 units on the old frame)

7. Frame quality • Coverage is good • Frame is regularly updated • Out of scope units are minimised • Units appear only once on the frame • Up to date contact information is available • There is good quality information for classifying units • There is consistency with the frames used for other ABS (and non-ABS) collections

8. Quality Assurance • The ABS has developed frame maintenance strategies to further improve the quality of the ABR frame • Out of scope units identified in processing flagged • Collection information fed back (to ABS ABR-based frame) • Business structure and name and address information updated where relevant • More significant and complex businesses are profiled by the ABS

9. Fitness for use • ABR-based frame is very good for collections of farm ‘business’ information • However, where precise coverage of a particular industry is required, industry-list frames are also used • The ABR-based frame enables ABS agricultural census/survey information to be linked with information from administrative sources, such as taxation data, on a unit record basis • However, the ABR-based frame is less suitable for collections where the predominant aspect of interest is land-based, particularly for regionally specific information • The ABS has developed a ‘land parcel’ approach to provide land-based information for specific regional areas

10. Thank you!