Database name:	Census of Agriculture Custom Retrievals (replaces information formerly available from the Environmental Information System)
Thematic Coverage:	This census collects comprehensive data on the major commodities of the agriculture industry while as well as information on new or less common crops, livestock, finances, and use of technology.
Maintained by:	Agriculture Division, Statistics Canada
Availability:	A public release version of the census is available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI). Some variables are suppressed and other are aggregated to protect the anonymity of individual survey respondents. Custom tabulations are available on a cost recovery basis. Subject to confidentiality constraints, custom tabulations and maps can be produced for Census of Agriculture standard geographic areas as well as user-defined areas.

Start Date:	1896 - Manitoba only 1906 - Extended to Alberta and Saskatchewan 1956 - Extended to entire country and conducted concurrently with the Census of Population
Release Date:	Data release begins second quarter of proceeding year through 2 calendar years
Frequency of collection:	Quinquennial (most recent 2001)

Data Collection:	The Census of Agriculture was collected with the Census of Population and Housing. Enumerators were asked to identify all agricultural operations in their enumeration area and the corresponding operators. Each operator was asked to complete the agriculture questionnaire.
Sample size:	346,200 farm operators on 246923 farms in 2001

Geographic coverage:	All provinces and territories
Lowest geographic level collected:	Postal Code
Lowest geographic level available:	Enumeration area
Existing rural variable:	No

Rural definitions that can be constructed from this database include (building block):

Census "rural areas"	(Enumeration Area)
Rural and Small Town definition	(Census Subdivision)
Metropolitan area and census agglomeration Influenced Zones	(Census Subdivision)
OECD "rural communities" definition	(Census Consolidated Subdivision)
OECD "predominantly rural regions" definition	(Census Division)
Ehrensaft's "Beale codes"	(Census Division)

Data Elements:

• Population and population change
• Dwelling characteristics
• Agricultural land uses
• Agricultural cropping practices
• Fertilizer and pesticide use
• Soil conservation practices
• Industrial characteristics and activities
• Locations of power generating stations
  

Notes:
Tabulations can be generated for special geographic areas, such as river basins, ecoregions or urban areas, or for specific themes, such as population distribution or agricultural practices. Information on activities which affect water quality, for example, is presented by drainage area. Geocoding was used to develop the linkage between the postal codes of the establishments of the drainage area and ecozone geographies.

Where possible, incomplete or inconsistent records receive substitute values derived from other information on the record. In cases of total non-response and for data that cannot be derived from the incomplete record, a process of selecting suitable data from "nearest neighbour" records is used. The system searches for another operation with similar characteristics and within the same geographic area as the questionnaire with the problem. Once a suitable match was made the system duplicated the donor's responses in the recipient questionnaire.

For more information, see website at:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/agcensus2001/index.htm

This area contains documents in Portable Document Format (PDF). To view documents in PDF, you will need the Adobe Acrobat® Reader, which can be downloaded from the Adobe website.