the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Statistical Atlas of European Agriculture: Gridded Data from the Agricultural Census 2020 and the Spatial Distribution of CAP Contextual Indicators
Abstract. International organizations have voiced the need to integrate geographical information from agricultural holdings into official statistics to gain a better understanding of the spatial dynamics of the European agricultural sector. This paper presents a set of thematic maps based on the European 2020 agricultural census to explore the major structural differences between regions and countries. To comply with the confidentiality requirements associated with the census data, we applied a multi-resolution gridded approach by varying the resolution of the grid cells as a function of the density, dominance, and quality of individual observations. The data sets contain a mixture of grid resolutions ranging from 1 km to 40 km, preserving a hierarchical structure where higher resolution grids are aggregated into lower levels until the statistical disclosure requirements are met. The variables presented here correspond to the Contextual Indicators of the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Framework of the Common Agricultural Policy and are divided into three broad categories: structural components (i.e., agricultural holdings, land use, livestock patterns, and labor input); the demographics of farmers (i.e., age, gender, and skills); and agricultural production methods (i.e., irrigation and organic farming). Our exploratory analysis indicates that high farm density occurs in plains and lowlands, as well as fertile soil areas in valleys, high shares of organic farming tend to be concentrated in certain areas with high proportions of grassland, and agricultural holdings managed by young farmers are located in a belt stretching from France through to Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland. These novel data sets are highly versatile, allowing not only policies to evaluate funding schemes at more local levels, but they also offer researchers new opportunities to draw causal spatial inference from the multi-resolution gridded data. The IFSGRID dataset is the first attempt to create an unprecedented harmonized view of European agriculture with high spatial resolution, and it is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14852709 (Eurostat, 2025).
- Preprint
(11783 KB) - Metadata XML
- BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: open (until 08 May 2025)
-
RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-59', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Apr 2025
reply
Overall, I find this dataset to be a valuable resource. The multi-resolution approach offers more spatial detail than traditional summary statistics over large regions while preserving data confidentiality. However, the manuscript would benefit from revisions to improve the clarity and communication of the methods, results, and conclusions. Additionally, the flow of the manuscript could be refined to enhance readability.
- Consider restructuring the manuscript slightly to allocate more space for the methodology section. In particular, it would be helpful to provide more detail on how the maps were generated and how the analyses were conducted—for example, the statistical link analysis and the comparison with traditional NUTS2-level summary statistics. The results are currently integrated with the discussion, which can be effective when they usually refer to the same figure. However, some parts of the results section could be shortened, and the discussion could be enriched by referencing relevant literature to support the interpretations.
- Figures 9 and 10 are missing scale bars, which would help readers interpret the spatial extent. Additionally, the color bars and legends are too small to read clearly and should be adjusted for better legibility.
- Consider that readers may not be familiar with all domain-specific context; it would be helpful to provide brief explanations where needed and avoid vague or ambiguous wording. Additionally, the manuscript includes a number of abbreviations. Please ensure that all abbreviations are defined upon first use and used consistently throughout the text.
Detailed comments on specific instances can be found in the attached PDF.
-
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2025-59', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 May 2025
reply
Overall, I find this dataset to be a very useful resource. While the use of multi-resolution also has its limitations in terms of combining it with other datasets of different spatial resolutions, it offers more spatial detail that can be extremely useful for policymakers and researchers alike, while preserving data confidentiality. I can definitely see many potential uses of the dataset.
In terms of potential aspects where the manuscript could be further improved, these include:
- In the first paragraph of the introduction, to provide context to those readers who may not be familiar with the multiple CAP reforms (e.g. MacSharry; Agenda 2000) it could be useful to briefly describe these.
- I would find it useful to have a brief summary of the confidentiality requirements either in the text or as an annex. I think that laying these out clearly in the manuscript would provide stronger motivation for the use of the method.
- I agree with the third point of the first reviewer of ensuring that all abbreviations are defined and not assuming that all readers will be familiar with all domain-specific knowledge.
In addition to these points, there are two more small aspects that caught my attention:
- In some cases, it seems that pixels go across borders to non-EU countries. In Northern Ireland, for example, a fairly large share of the country seems to be covered, which I found odd. I assume that all data is for Ireland and that it occurs as a result of lower resolution in the Northern parts of Ireland. It may be useful to have a footnote or note somewhere explaining this.
- Website: The current sentence reads: “The gridded data from the different layers can be downloaded as a zipped file, and the viewer is publicly accessible at the following experimental data website: Eurostat.” I do not know whether this is what was originally intended by the authors, but it could be useful to put the actual website link instead.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-59-RC2
Data sets
Geospatial data from agricultural census Eurostat and JRC https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/geospatial-data-agricultural-census
Model code and software
MRG Jon Olav Skoien and Nicolas Lampach https://github.com/jskoien/mrg
Viewed
HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
291 | 57 | 11 | 359 | 10 | 10 |
- HTML: 291
- PDF: 57
- XML: 11
- Total: 359
- BibTeX: 10
- EndNote: 10
Viewed (geographical distribution)
Country | # | Views | % |
---|
Total: | 0 |
HTML: | 0 |
PDF: | 0 |
XML: | 0 |
- 1