This document summarizes Canada's experience collecting agricultural land data for its Census of Agriculture. It discusses how Canada collects total land area at the holding level, including breakdowns by land use and tenure. It also describes how Canada is moving to collect more detailed geographic data at the parcel level, leveraging crop insurance and remote sensing data to obtain complete land cover information without direct farmer contact. This helps validate census data and produce accurate crop area estimates.

1. Regional Roundtable on
World Programme for the Census of Agriculture 2020
Nairobi, Kenya,
18-22 September 2017
Theme 2: Land – Canada’s Experience
Technical Session 06
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Frédéric Normand
Chief, Census of Agriculture
Agriculture Division
Statistics Canada
Frederic.Normand@canada.ca

2. Presentation outline – the list of items
•Satellite remote sensing
•Crop Insurance
0201 Total area of holding
0202 Area of holding according to land use types
0203 Area of holding according to land tenure types
0204 Location (for each parcel)
0205 Area (for each parcel)
0206 Land use (for each parcel)
0207 Land tenure (for each parcel)
0208 Terms of rental (for each rented parcel)
0209 Use of shifting cultivation (for each parcel)
0210 Number of years since cleared (for each parcel)
0211 Presence of soil degradation: type and degree (for the holding)

3. Background
 The Census of Agriculture (CEAG) provides a
comprehensive and integrated profile of the
physical, economic, social and environmental
aspects of Canada’s agriculture industry.
◦ It is used to track agricultural trends.
◦ Provide insight and measure the health of the agricultural
industry in Canada.
 This presentation will highlight our method of
collect data on agricultural land.
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4. Total area of holding
 CEAG requires respondents to report their land
area to ensure the collection of measurements of
agricultural land, which is vital in agricultural
census analysis.
 We collect three important variables
◦ Total land
◦ Total net area = Total land - Area of land used by others
◦ Total area in use
 Total farm area
◦ Total farm area, which is land owned or operated by an
agricultural operation, includes: cropland, summerfallow,
improved and unimproved pasture, woodlands and wetlands,
all other land (including idle land and land on which farm
buildings are located). 4

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Total area of holding
Total farm area, cropland area and number of agricultural
operations, Canada, 1961 to 2016

6. Area of holding according to land use types
Following the Total Net Area, further breakdown of this variable is necessary
to identify characteristics of the land
CEAG land use classes:
 Cropland: all land used to grow crops, sod, nursery and Christmas trees
 Summerfallow: land used to practice cultivating and/or applying chemicals to cultivate land to
keep it free from vegetation
 Tame or seeded pasture: Land seeded with pasture with the intent of taken care of it
 Natural land for pasture: Land used for pasture with minimal land work
 Woodlands and wetlands: land used for woodlots, sugar bushes, trees windbreaks, bush,
ponds, bogs, marshes, sloughs etc.
 All other land: Idle land, land on which farm buildings, barnyards, lanes, home gardens,
greenhouses and mushroom houses are located
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9. Total land
Total Area Owned
Includes all area owned whether
used or not for farming
Leased From Governments
Includes land operated under
licenses, permits or leases from
the gov.
Rented or leased FROM others
Includes land owned by others,
but rented or leased by this
operation.
Crop-Shared land USED by the
operation
This includes land controlled by
the respondent but operated as a
crop-share by someone else
Other areas USED by the
operation
All other area used by others not
included previously. I.E.: land
trading, rent free, etc.
Area of holding according to land tenure types and
terms of rental (for each rented parcel)
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10. Land Tenure
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11. Information at the parcel level
Currently
 The Census of Agriculture disseminates data at what would be equivalent of a township, county or
regional level.
 As farms grew in size and began to have operations which crossed these lower level geographies
we began a process that collects more detailed geographic data on the footprint of these
operations.
 We look only to secure data from operations judged most likely to cross regional boundaries.
 We seek to collect basic information on the proportional allocation of land uses and livestock
types in each region.
 This data is then combined with census data to derive a more reflective regional image of
agricultural activity.
 This limited approach balances the need for data with response burden and collection costs from a
conventional survey type program.
Future
 As we increase our access to administrative data, we will have more information at the parcel
level.
 We should be able to draw upon crop insurance, utility, property assessment, land registry,
livestock traceability and remote sensing data sets to establish with a high degree of confidence
land tenure, use, practices and inventories.
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12. Crop Insurance and Remote Sensing
 CEAG continues to evolve by findings new
methods to release accurate and timely
information
 With the use of crop insurance and remote
sensing
◦ The objective of this methodology is to produce accurate
crop area estimations without any direct contact with
farmers (reduce response burden)
◦ Validate the Census of Agriculture data to ensure high
quality data
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13. Crop Insurance
• Administered by each province
• Different database format and specifications for
each province
• Georeferencing in different formats
• Québec: exact field boundary in GIS format
• Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba: percentage of a
quarter-section
• Ontario: farm level
 Useful for :
• Get a general distribution of the crops by region
• Used in conjunction with satellite imagery to get full
coverage
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: Insured fields (80-90% of
total cropland)
: additional (non-insured)
cropland, as detected from
satellite imagery
Non-agricultural land
Montérégie, Québec
Crop Insurance Data
 Québec: Field level data with crop type and boundary

15. Remote Sensing Data
 An annual classification of the agricultural land
cover of Canada has been produced by Agriculture
and Agri-Food Canada since 2009
 Statistics Canada has been involved since 2014
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Medium-resolution satellite data
(~30 metres)

16. Remote Sensing Data (continued)
 Crops are associated with a spectral and
temporal signature
 Ground data and/or crop insurance can be used
to train the classification algorithm to associate
these signatures with a crop type
May 1, 2016 July 14, 2016 August 16, 2016 September 6, 2016
Gaofen-1 satellite data: 16 meter resolution
False Colour Infrared images
Saint Peters Bay, Prince Edward Island, Canada

17. Crop Insurance + Remote Sensing
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• Step 1 – compute acreage from crop insurance file by crop
type (partial coverage)
• Step 2 – Use the satellite classification (complete coverage)
to fill gaps from the crop insurance data file
Crop insurance data
Additional cropland found
with satellite imagery
Non-agricultural land

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Thank you