SA4 Farm Management and Demographics - Businesses Involved 2016-2017

This dataset presents the management and demographics of farms in Australia by Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) and counts of businesses involved, in Australia by Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4), from the 2016-17 Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodities Survey (REACS). Data is aggregated to 2016 ASGS SA4 boundaries.

The REACS is conducted annually in the years between the five-yearly Agricultural Census. The scope of the 2016-17 REACS was all businesses undertaking agricultural activity recorded on the The Australian Bureau of Statistics' Business Register (ABSBR) above a minimum threshold applied to the estimated value of their agricultural operations. The scope for the 2016-17 REACS was all agricultural businesses with an Estimated Value of Agricultural Operations (EVAO) of $40,000 or greater. This is a change from previous REACS collections, where a scope of EVAO of $5,000 or greater was used, and is a continuation of the scope used in the 2015-16 Agricultural Census. As a result of the change in scope, the estimates from the 2016-17 REACS will not be directly comparable to previous published REACS outputs. To address this, additional estimates have been produced from a number of rural environment and agricultural commodity collections from 2010-11 to 2014-15 using an EVAO of $40,000 or greater. The 2016-17 REACS final estimates are based on the achieved target response rate of 82.4% from a sample of 30,466 agricultural businesses selected.

The estimates in this dataset are based on information obtained from agricultural businesses that responded to the 2016-17 REACS. However, since not all of the businesses that were selected provided data, the estimates are subject to sampling variability; that is, they may differ from the figures that would have been produced if information had been collected from all businesses. Most published estimates have relative standard errors (RSEs) less than 10%. For some states and territories with limited production of certain commodities, RSEs are greater than 10%. Estimates with an RSE greater than 50% are considered too unreliable for general use and hence have been removed from the data.

This data is ABS data (catalogue number: 7121.0) used with permission from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

For more information on the dataset please visit the Australian Bureau of Statistics: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/7121.0Explanatory%20Notes12016-17?OpenDocument.

Please note: * Estimates with an RSE value greater than 50% and are considered too unreliable for general use and have been removed from the data * Where data was not published or not applicable the records have been set to null