Crops and Livestock Provisional June 2023

Introduction

This release presents provisional estimates of land utilisation and livestock numbers in June 2023 at State level. The estimates for sheep are based on returns from the Integrated Farm Structure Survey June 2023, conducted by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The estimates for cattle and for crops are obtained from administrative data from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF). The pig estimates are based on returns from the June 2023 Pig Survey which collects data on pig numbers held by specialised producers. 

Coverage

Farms where the agricultural area used was at least one hectare (2.47 acres) are included in the Integrated Farm Structure Survey. Specialised pig farms, totalling 340, were included in the survey for June 2023 with a response rate of 91.1%.

Results

Crops

The results for crops are based on data obtained from the DAFM Basic Payment Scheme.

Cattle

The results for cattle are obtained from DAFM’s Animal Identification and Movement (AIM) system and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF). 

Sheep

The June 2023 results for sheep are compiled by comparing the returns from the DAFM's 2022 Sheep Census to the returns from the CSO's Integrated Farm Structure Survey June 2023. Trends are compared between the farms that returned both the DAFM Sheep Census and the Integrated Farm Structure Survey June 2023. These trends are applied to each sheep category to calculate the final figures.

Pigs

In cases where a pig farm did not make a June 2023 return, an estimate was created by taking that farm's 2022 return and applying the trend observed between the 2022 and 2023 collected data for each category of pigs.  

As figures in the text and tables have been rounded to the nearest 100 units there may be slight discrepancies between the sum (or difference) of the constituent items and the totals shown. Percentage changes have been calculated on actual figures.