Groundswell urged farmers to boycott the census over the emissions metric Stats NZ uses. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Provisional results for Stats NZs Agricultural Production Survey shows 72 percent per cent of expected respondents have replied.
The survey conducted every five years provides up-to-date data that can be used for industry forecasting, policy advice and trade negotiations.
This year farming protest group Groundswell urged farmers to boycott the census as it took issue with the emissions metric Stats NZ uses - but Stats NZ says just 0.5 percent of people refusing to take part in the survey referred to Groundswell's campaign.
"The emissions metric used by Statistics NZ, called GWP100, overstates the impact of agricultural emissions by 400 percent, as found in a study by an Oxford professor, and is one of the main reasons cited by those who want to punish farmers and growers for their emissions," the group said.
Stats NZ said so far 72 percent of expected respondents have replied compared with 84 percent in the last census.
Stats NZ general manager for Economics and Environmental reporting Jason Attewell said the response rate is lower than expected, but just 0.5 percent of the refusals referred to Groundswell's boycott campaign, or about 200 farmers.
"We have seen lower response rates across all data collection since covid, it's been a challenging time," he said.
"The agriculture production survey is so important, because we know that agriculture is such an important part of the New Zealand economy. We know that farmers and growers and forestry owners who are asked to fill this out, they're busy people but this data is really important for them to be able to show the importance of that industry," Mr Attewell said.
He said there's still time to fill out the survey - which closes at the end of the year.
The final data will be published next May.
What the provisional data shows
At 30 June 2022, the number of:
- Beef cattle was 3.8 million, down 3 percent from 2021
- Sheep was 25.1 million, down 2 percent from 2021
- Dairy cattle was 5.9 million, down 4 percent from 2021.
During the year ended 30 June 2022, the area of:
- Wheat harvested was 40,900 hectares, a decrease of 6 percent from 2021
- Barley harvested was 44,000 hectares, no change from 2021.