New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts

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Forum¹

The number of farms and farmers in New Zealand: a plea for researcher access to farm samples and the inclusion of farmer data

John R. Fairweather

AERU, Lincoln University
PO Box 84
Lincoln University
Lincoln 7647, Canterbury
New Zealand

Fairweat@lincoln.ac.nz

It seems like a simple question: how many farmers on how many farms are there in New Zealand? The answer: we do not know. This is not because we are not interested in finding out but because such simple questions are actually very difficult to answer. There is currently no database which accurately includes all productive farms and farmers in New Zealand. The official data are based on a business frame which includes only GST-registered farmers and excludes productive smallholdings not GST registered. Further, it does not seek data on farmers but only the production from the farms. So we have a problem in that, while the official statistics are excellent in what they do cover, they omit some productive farms and ignore farmers. There is a related problem which motivates this article: can we be assured that in future there will be databases from which researchers can obtain samples with which to do ongoing public good research on farming in New Zealand? In this brief article I characterise the background and current state of farm databases, raise a question about their comprehensiveness, assert the need to learn about farmers and social organisation of farms, and make a case for researcher access to samples of farmers.

 

¹The Forum section contains short opinion articles on topics within the scope of the New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research. Forum articles are not refereed, and editing is limited to style matters. They should be no more than the equivalent of 2500 words including references. Articles commenting on a specific paper will be referred to the author(s) of that paper for right of reply before publication. Forum articles should not be cited as scientific papers.

A08056; Online publication date 30 October 2008
Received 26 September 2008

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 2008, Vol. 51:485–488
0028–8233/08/5104–0485 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2008

PDF file of entire paper: Print-quality (629K)

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