About the Farm Business Survey

How are farms selected?

Farms are randomly selected from the June Census returns to provide a representative sample of 600 Welsh farms covering the main farm types. Letters are sent to potential participants and if the farmer agrees, a convenient visiting date is arranged by phone. During this recruiting visit the farm area, farming system, opening stock numbers and bank details, as well as other relevant information is obtained.

How is the information gathered?

An Investigational Officer from the Institute visits the farm once a year and enters the financial details into a laptop computer and notes stock numbers, crop areas and other physical farm data.

How do farmers benefit?

Cooperating farms are provided with management accounts and gross margins for dairy, beef and sheep enterprises together with comparative data for similar farms.
Farmers’ cooperation provides the farming unions, governments, the EU, educational establishments and others with accurate information for use in formulating effective policies and in teaching and research.

Is the survey confidential?

Each participating farm is known simply by number and details of individual farms are not published.

Who has access to the data?

The processed electronic data is passed on to the Welsh Government, DEFRA and EU in anonymous form. Results are published each year in the form of farm type and size group averages.