Commission adopts proposal improving collection and use of farm statistics to better support agricultural policy-making

Today, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation on new, integrated ways to collect and use statistics on farms so as to better support policy making in general and agricultural policy in particular. The proposed framework Regulation on Integrated Farm Statistics will improve the analysis of the state, trends and impacts of European agriculture and contribute to EU responses in the areas of climate change, environmental policies, rural development, and food security. The proposed framework Regulation will increase the comparability and coherence of EU statistics on the structure of European farms, speed up data transmission, and allow for a more elegant, flexible and targeted data collection which reduces the burden on farms in the EU. It is an important step forward to meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs and requirements for European agricultural statistics, while also reducing the costs and burdens of data collection. Agriculture uses almost half of the land area of the European Union. It has a large impact on climate change and the environment, and many rural communities depend on agriculture. The EU needs the most accurate information in this field to design policies that benefit all citizens of Europe. The European Commission is strongly committed to supporting sustainable development and fighting climate change, and the proposal helps to achieve these goals.