What is a typical farm?

This is probably the most frequent question raised to the Networks.

A typical farm is

• an existing farm or a data set describing a farm,
• in a specific region which represents a major share of output for the product considered,
• running the prevailing production system for the product considered,
• reflecting the prevailing combination of enterprises as well as land and capital resources,
• as well as the prevailing type of labour organisation.

Why typical farms?

There are mainly three approaches to data

• Individual farm data (like European Dairy Farmers)
• Averages of farm survey data (like the Farm Accountancy Data Network of the EU (FADN))
• Typical farm data (like agri benchmark)

All of them reveal particular strengths and weaknesses shown in the following table.

Comparing different approaches to farm data

It is obvious that the typical farm approach is the one with the most advantages when considering the criteria applied here (which are basically the criteria valid for agri benchmark).

Which size and management level do we require?

[Note: the follwing examples are for beef farms. Procedures are equivalent in the cash crop, dairy and sheep activities.]

Size is defined as ‘total animals sold per year’ for beef finishing, ‘average number of suckler cows’ for cow-calf and ‘land used for cash crop production’ measured in hectares for cash-crop production. The following criteria for the definition of the farms apply:

• The typical farms should have less than 50 % off-farm income and/or sustain at least the living of one person.
• As a standard, agri benchmark defines a moderate size and a large size farm in each region identified. This allows to reflect a large number of farms and a major share in production.
• Both farms should represent an average level of management (average profit level).
• Regional statistics on farm size distribution are used to determine the position of the farms in the distribution of the farm population or representative surveys.
• In order to reflect the region’s potential further to the two farms it is envisaged to define a third farm with top management in the future.

What are the steps to define typical farms?

For the purpose of defining typical farms, a standard operating procedure was developed to ensure the same approach and working steps in all countries participating. The SOP Beef and SOP Cash Crop are basically the same with slight modifications to best reflect the product related particularities.

The steps to define typical farms are defined as follows and specified in the papers:

I. Identification phase (scientist + advisor)

• Go strictly branch-wise (e.g. beef, dairy etc.)
• Select important regions
• Analyse regional farm structure
• Define features of two or three typical farms
• Crosscheck with population and/or survey data

II. Data collection phase (scientist, advisor, farmers)

• Contact farmers who operate such farms (»panel«)
• Collect full set of economic and physical farm data

III. Processing and crosschecking phase

• Compute results for the virtual typical farms
• Cross-check with advisor (farmers); make improvements