Following on from the correction to the 2019 crop area figures by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released on Friday, December 6, AgriLand takes a closer look at the figures.

The crop area figures are now almost on a par with those released to AgriLand by the Department of Agriculture in October, although a slight change has occurred in the department’s figures for the barley area.

The department increased the area sown to barley by approximately 300ha, according to the table below. The department sent an updated file to the CSO on November 22.

The total cereal area has increased by 2%, despite the CSO reporting a decline of 6.4% in September.

Individual crop area changes from 2018 to 2019

The biggest increase in crop area came from winter barley, which rose by 42.8% or 24,800ha. On the other side of that coin, the area planted to spring barley decreased by 24.5% of 31,200ha.

The winter wheat area increased by 9.2%, or 5,000ha, while the spring wheat area increased by 6.1% (3,800ha).

The area planted to winter oats took a big jump due to ideal sowing conditions. 16,600ha of winter oats were planted, an increase of 63.1% (6,400ha). The spring oats area declined by 6.5% (500ha) but overall the area sown to oats was up by 33.4% (5,900ha).

Data source: CSO

*It should be noted that the CSO rounds off the figures to the nearest hundred.

AgriLand revealed anomaly in November

On November 14, AgriLand unveiled an anomaly in figures which it received from the Department of Agriculture and the CSO.

The CSO had reported that 245,000ha were planted to cereals in 2019. This figure was released in September. The department’s provisional figure sent to AgriLand in June was 259,329ha, while the department’s final figure, received by AgriLand in June, was 266,343ha (final).

CSO correction

On December 6, the CSO released a correction, which is also printed on its website.

The correction stated:

“The statistics on the area under crops in June 2019, published on 18 September 2019, have been revised on foot of corrected raw data. This means that the Headline Table, Figures 1 and 2, and Table 1 of the release are revised. The corresponding commentary text has also been revised.

“The total area under cereals in June 2019 has been revised upwards from 245,000 hectares to 266,700 hectares. The total area under potatoes has also been revised upwards from 7,100 hectares to 8,600 hectares.

“The revision is based on revised data received from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) system on 22 November 2019. The revised data from DAFM corrected discrepancies in the BPS data used in compiling the release issued by the CSO on 18 September 2019.”