Improving Data Collection and Measurement of Complex Farms (2019) / Chapter Skim
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5 The Growing Complexity of Farm Business Structure: Implications for Data Collection
5 The Growing Complexity of Farm Business Structure: Implications for Data Collection
Pages 115-142
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From page 115... ...
Depending on the purpose of the survey instrument, the relevant population may be businesses, land units, or households. The presence of large complex farm operations creates challenges to defining statistical units for observation and reporting, challenges that do not exist to the same extent in the case of simple farms.
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From page 116... ...
When considering the appropriate statistical unit for measuring complex farm operations, the motivating question should be "what do we want to measure? " At least conceptually, there are three types of statistical units that can come into play, each with a distinct emphasis: 1.
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From page 117... ...
• Ownership (age, sex, Soil and climate • Legal structure education) Commodity • Commodity output On-farm role produced • Farm typology Off-farm Land use activity Decision making role • Household On-farm activity Off-farm activity Key Variables • Financial • Farm and off-farm • Area/acres information: income, assets, and • Ownership and Income statements debt tenure and balance sheets • Farm labor • Land use • Production and off-farm information employment Potential • Register of all • List frame, area • Area frame, list Sampling farms frame (e.g., Census frame of fields Frames Master Address (e.g., Farm Service File)
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From page 118... ...
The remainder of this section examines in greater detail delineations between these different types of statistical units. Applying alternative definitions of farm (an income-generating institutional unit)
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From page 119... ...
. However, individuals have different attributes from the farms they manage, and the type of information that can be obtained from individuals, as statistical units, is different from what can be collected from a farm as an institutional unit.
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From page 120... ...
NASS uses both operator-dominant and operation-dominant statistical units, depending on the survey. Operator-dominant statistical units are operators reporting for all their operations, and this is used for all multiple frame surveys like ARMS.
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From page 121... ...
It is difficult to link a specific plot of land to a farm or farm household through farm operators. One of the main purposes of the area frame has been to provide a way to estimate the undercoverage of the list frame through selecting and enumerating a sample of the land segments, matching the operations on the 3 Special codes simplify overlap by maintaining target name and operator dominant classification for individual/partnership, secondary decision maker, decision maker for multiple operations, and large/complex farms.
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From page 122... ...
However, because the current sampling frame consists of pairs of farm operators and operations, the implied population of farm operators that can be reached through this approach will not always correspond to the true target population of "farm households." Additionally, the current sampling approach may not always capture the right target population, because operators with multiple operations have a higher probability of being sampled than do operators with a single operation. For example, a person's household with two farms is twice as likely to appear in the sample as another person's household that only operates a simple business consisting of one farm, but the weights will be the same, assuming that the farms are otherwise identical.
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From page 123... ...
Other statistical agencies, both domestically and internationally, are faced with the challenge of creating organizational systems that can accommodate complex business structures. In doing so, they must balance the need to create a complete, unduplicated list frame of all organizational entities in the population against the ability of respondents to see themselves represented within the statistical structure provided.
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From page 124... ...
For instance, usage of the term "enterprise" in a business register is different from the agricultural industry's usage of the term, where it denotes the activity that can occur within a farm, as in the case of a crop or livestock enterprise within a farm. In this section, descriptions of practices by the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
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From page 125... ...
One recommendation is that agricultural production be included in statistical business registers. There is a recognition that some countries may organize separate farm registers, as is current practice in the United States.
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From page 126... ...
The Census Bureau The Census Bureau maintains the Business Register, a relational database that links data from administrative sources and survey products.8 As with NASS farm list frames, the Business Register combines data from multiple sources "with the goal of providing comprehensive, accurate, and timely coverage of business units" (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018, p.
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From page 127... ...
Code. Thus, the Census Bureau faces the following challenge: It must use the tax-reporting behavior of businesses to identify economic activity and then organize that activity within the establishment-enterprise hierarchy.
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From page 128... ...
Administrative records by themselves are insufficient for maintaining the establishment-enterprise hierarchy in its Business Register. For this reason, the Census Bureau supplements the administrative information provided by the IRS with responses to the Company Organization Survey.
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From page 129... ...
Recognizing these costs, it is worth noting two important aspects of the Company Organization Survey: It is short and its directions are clear. In order to support statistical activities such as surveys and administrative data linkage, the Business Register should contain core information on the following: • unique identifier for each unit, • business name, • address, • operational structure (providing linkages between farm establishments, • size and activity measures (important for stratification, exclusion of very small units, etc.)
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From page 130... ...
raises some issues concerning the Business Register that are also relevant for the NASS list frame or for a potential Farm Register (described later in this chapter)
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From page 131... ...
Options for the Farm Register The existence of multifarm, multibusiness operations, along with the complexity of the management and decision-making structure of these businesses, as described in Chapter 3, require modifications to the current list-frame approach. RECOMMENDATION 5.2: The National Agricultural Statistics Ser vice should expand on its list frame to create a Farm Register that provides an ongoing enumeration of all farm establishments in the United States.
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From page 132... ...
This reg ister should maintain a linkage between statistical units, administrative units, reporting units, and household units. The design of this Farm Register should be informed by the planned redesign of the Census Bureau's Business Register.
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From page 133... ...
level coherence with the Census Bureau or BLS Reporting Units A group of To aid respondents Reporting units statistical units who may have are linked to their that are combined difficulties, or face constituent statistical or split to aid significant burden, units, so that reported the respondent in reporting for data can be allocated in reporting each statistical unit to each information Household Units Households Provide a link Producers should be associated with between the responsible for some farm producers household and the aspect of decision farm business making on the farm, so there should be an ownership or employment link with the statistical units NOTES: BLS = Bureau of Labor Statistics, EIN = Employer Identification Number, SSN = Social Security Number, USDA = U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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From page 134... ...
Statistical units may be agglomerated or split into different reporting units to ease respondent burden, but the collected information will be allocated or agglomerated to correspond to the farm establishment or farm business, as more strictly defined. Household Units Given the requirement to produce statistics on the financial well-being of farm households, it is important to draw a link between the farm business structures and their operators.
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From page 135... ...
Sampling from the Farm Register The proposed Farm Register differs from the current list-frame approach in that it provides a more prescribed structure for the collection of statistical units, while allowing for flexibility in combining units for reporting (collection entities) and eventual linkage to administrative data.
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From page 136... ...
can be obtained in a second to the operation by ownership or stage survey employment Area Frame Land/Location • Statistical units are segments, tracts, • Information on segments, tracts, and and fields fields continues to be collected, but it is important that this information is fed back into the Farm Register and with appropriate linkages to institutional and individual units of multiple farm establishments to the farm business. This is depicted in Figure 5.2.
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From page 137... ...
FIGURE 5.2 Linkages in the proposed sampling frame for multiple-farm establishments. NOTE: EIN = Employer Identification Number, SSN = Social Security Number.
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From page 138... ...
The operators enumerated are not necessarily the same as the FIGURE 5.3 Linkages in the proposed sampling frame for a business that combines farm and nonfarm establishments. NOTE: EIN = Employer Identification Number, SSN = Social Security Number.
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From page 139... ...
In particular, a farm household list frame would make it possible to include additional households or individual-level auxiliary information, and it would allow for a more efficient, more direct sampling of households. RECOMMENDATION 5.6: The National Agricultural Statistics Ser vice should create a separate list frame of farm households within the overall Farm Register that would lead to a more efficient sampling of farm households and/or persons involved in farm activities, since the household list itself can be stratified or augmented with auxiliary data.
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From page 140... ...
The information collected in the Census of Agriculture would update information collected on the Farm Register and could thus be used to draw more targeted sample surveys. NASS and ERS would have to decide what characteristics are needed for sampling or for small-area estimates.
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From page 141... ...
Conducting a household survey every 3 years, for example, would allow ERS to fulfill its responsibility to report on the wellbeing of farm households. And by maintaining a link between households and farm establishments in the Farm Register, it should be possible to link the operational characteristics of the farm establishment with producers and the associated households.
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From page 142... ...
142 IMPROVING DATA COLLECTION AND MEASUREMENT OF COMPLEX FARMS Other information currently collected in ARMS but not needed annually could be collected in specialized, periodic surveys, which could target farm establishments, farm businesses, or fields. These could include focuses on pressing topics, such as antibiotic use or seed technology, or on more general farm topics, such as production practices, labor arrangements, sources and uses of debt, or participation in government programs.
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