The Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) has been collecting economic data from agricultural holdings at European level for decades. Due to the increased focus of EU agricultural policy on sustainability, the FADN is to be expanded into a Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN). The European Commission is therefore proposing an amendment to the basic regulation governing the FADN. This should also enable the collection of data to support and monitor the objectives of the Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy and the Biodiversity Strategy. In future, in addition to the microeconomic farm data already collected, additional data on social and environmental sustainability will also be collected.
Objective
- To assess the feasibility of collecting farm-level data for a range of sustainability topics, e.g. Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) objectives, Farm to Fork (F2F) and biodiversity strategies, and other sustainability indicators.
- Description of a methodological approach for the efficient and effective collection of data at farm level for the above-mentioned topics.
- Development of possible strategies to implement a common and harmonized methodology for the collection of sustainability data for all Member States, including a roadmap for the transformation of the current FADN into the FSDN.
Work carried out
As part of the pilot project ‘Converting Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) into Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN)’, the questionnaire sent out by ECORYS (contractor to the European Commission) was answered for Austria in 2022 in cooperation with Department II/1 and the LBG. In consultation with the LBG, interviews were conducted with 32 pilot farms in accordance with the selection plan provided by ECORYS.
The BAB assisted in responding to enquiries and participated in the preparation of statements on the topic of ‘FSDN’. Evaluations of the agricultural structure surveys were presented during a study visit by the European Commission.
BAB participated in the regular committee meetings on FSDN.
Coordination meetings were held with the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Climate Protection (BMLUK) and the Austrian Federal Office for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (LBG) on the national implementation of FSDN. In the course of these meetings, the indicators to be collected were determined and their two-stage implementation (reduced selection from the recording year 2025 onwards, including data on land area and farming methods, manure application, housing systems in animal husbandry, product sales channels, and full implementation in 2027 with additional data on renewable energy, use of active substances, feed quantities, etc.) were determined and classified. Based on this, the project consortium began coordinating the collection of indicators, where, in addition to a certain proportion of direct queries to individual farms (by the LBG), as many indicators as possible are to be determined from existing administrative data (including INVEKOS).
Planned work 2026
Work is continuing on selecting suitable data sources for calculating the indicators. The programming, evaluation and consolidation of administrative data is being carried out by the BAB. Once the preliminary programming work has been completed, the BAB plans to carry out initial evaluations based on the recording data for 2024. As soon as a test area for data transmission to the European Commission is available, an initial data import will be carried out.
Timetable
Project start: 01/2022
Project end: 03/2028
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