Page 175 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS423 Ylva A.R. et al.
in the statistical output. The overall project was divided into three phases: 1)
investigating alternative data sources, 2) developing a new web system for
data collection, and 3) increasing survey coordination.

2.1 Investigation of alternative data sources
In the first phase of the project, all of the present target characteristics
in the two surveys were thoroughly reviewed in close collaboration with
the main data users and stakeholders. Target characteristics with low use
or low relevance were marked and excluded from the next step, which
involved assessing possible alternative data sources for the target
variables, other than data collection directly from the farmers. Until then,
preliminary crop areas, used as supporting variables in the data collection,
had been obtained from the Integrated Administration and Control
System (IACS) register, and final crop areas and livestock types and
numbers, used in the final estimations, had been obtained from the Farm
Register. Two new registers were examined as potential additional data
sources: the Swedish Block Database – a Land Parcel Identification System
(LPIS) – and the register of crop areas with subsidies for organic farming.
The second alternative data source involved collection through automatic
data transmission from professional farm management software, which
was examined for the first time for this purpose. This first phase of the
project resulted in a list of variables that could potentially be collected
from alternative data sources (see Results, Table 1).

2.1.1 Land Parcel Identification System
The Swedish Block Database, which is owned by the Swedish
Board of Agriculture, is a database that contains data from all utilised
agricultural areas for which agricultural subsidies are applied. A
“block” is defined as a surface with permanent boundaries such as
roads, streams, forests or another farmer using the land. The database
contains coordinates of the geographic position of the centre of each
block, as well as data on area and crop grown. A new version of the
database is set up every year. Statistics Sweden ordered copies of the
Block Database for the years 2008–2014 to explore the possibility of
collecting data from an LPIS for the age variables for fallow and
temporary grasses, respectively. All blocks in the Block Database with
temporary grasses in 2014 were matched with blocks from the 2008–
2013 databases to investigate for how many consecutive years
temporary grasses had been cultivated in the same block. However,
one obstacle was that a block can change geographic coordinates due
to changes in the boundaries. Another challenge was that a block can
be divided into many parcels with the same coordinates. Therefore, a

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