A total of 55,909 surveys have been issued to farmers across the country by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The farm structure survey is carried out every three to four year under EU regulation. The last one in Ireland was conducted in 2013.

In a statement to the Irish Farmers Journal, the CSO said that “the information provided will be combined with administrative data on livestock and crops to provide a full picture of farming in Ireland in 2016. The information supplied by the farmer is treated as strictly confidential and used by the CSO for statistical purposes only. This is guaranteed by national and EU law.”

The survey contains a number of sections and gathers information relating to: farm management and diversification, labour input on the farm in the past 12 months, land use and soil management, livestock and poultry held on 1 June 2016, and collaborative (shared) farming.