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Production Activities as the core
The economic activities in the agricultural sector are broken down conceptually into ‘production activities’ (e.g. cropping a hectare of wheat or fattening a pig). These activities are characterised by physical output and input coefficients. For most activities, total production quantities can be found in statistics and output coefficients derived by division of activity levels (e.g. ‘soft wheat’ would produce ‘soft wheat’ and ‘straw’, whereas ‘pigs for fattening’ would produce ‘pig meat’ and NPK comprised in manure). However, for some activities other sources of information are necessary (e.g. a carcass weight of sows is necessary to derive the output coefficient for the pig fattening process). For manure output engineering functions are used to define the output coefficients. The way the different output coefficients are calculated is described in more detail below.
The second part characterising the production activities are the input coefficients. Soft wheat, to pick up our example again, would be linked to a certain use of NPK fertiliser, to the use of plant protection inputs, repair and energy costs. All these inputs are used by many activities, and official data regarding the distribution of inputs to activities are not available. The process of attributing total input in a region to individual activities is called input allocation. It is methodologically more demanding than constructing output coefficients. Specific estimators are developed for young animals, fertilisers, feed and the remaining inputs, which are discussed below.
Multiplied with average farm gate prices for outputs and inputs respectively, output coefficients define farm gate revenues, and input coefficients variable production costs. The average farm prices used in the CAPRI data base are derived from the EEA and hence link physical and valued statistics. However, in some cases as young animals and manure which are not valued in the EEA, own estimates are introduced.
In order to finalise the characterisation of the income situation in the different production activities, subsidies paid to production must be taken into account. The CAPRI data base features a rather complex description of the different CAP premiums allocated to the individual activities. However, subsidies outside of the CAP for the EU Member States have received less attention (in line with smaller amounts).
The following table gives an example for selected activity related information from the CAPRI data base.