Review of food and natural resources statistics

The statistical programme of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) is being renewed to comply with wishes expressed by stakeholders. In addition, upcoming changes to EU regulations will affect Luke’s statistics and knowledge production. Recent events have increased the importance of statistics, as they can be used to assess the security of food and energy supply. Statistics provide long-term information which, like statistics included in the European Statistical System, is comparable across the EU member states. 

Luke is one of the four statistical authorities in Finland that are legally obligated to produce statistics on food and natural resources. Much of our statistics are produced pursuant to EU regulations, but we also produce statistics required for national policies and strategies.

Changes to EU regulations

In addition to changes in national information requirements, monitoring of the implementation of EU strategies and policies results in information requirements involving the development of the European Statistical System. As a result, the EU’s statistical regulations are revised from time to time, and expansions of our statutory statistical production will be introduced in the near future.  A new basic regulation on statistics on agricultural input and ouput statistics is almost finalized. The main changes in the new regulation will be an expansion of the compulsory monitoring of organic production and increased frequency of statistics on the use of plant protection products. The new regulation is expected to enter into force in 2025, but we are preparing to implement some of its requirements beforehand in Finland.

However, the EU’s statistical regulations do not directly regulate Luke’s forest statistics and their production. The provision of statistics for Eurostat and other international statistical requirements has been voluntary. This may change in the future, as Eurostat is preparing an expansion of the statistical regulation on environmental accounts to make responding to it a legal requirement.  Forest accounts constitute part of the environmental accounting, and once the reform is complete, Luke’s statistical unit and the National Forest Inventory will produce applicable data. The next step at the EU level will be tackling fisheries regulations.

Luke’s new statistical programme

As information requirements change over time, we regularly review our statistical production. For the most recent review, we conducted comprehensive stakeholder consultations over the winter. We discussed with data users the type of statistical information they expected to need in the future and which aspects of our production had already become obsolete.

There were many requests, which we carefully reviewed during the spring. Some requests could be met by advising the stakeholder where they can find the required information, while others can be implemented with reasonable ease. Some of the requests are not feasible due to data protection issues or a high response burden, however.

The new statistical programme for 2022–2024 describes statistics, statistical surveys, and other sources of statistics and related services included in Luke’s statistical programme, such as the statistics section on Luke’s new website. Luke’s statistical programme currently covers 53 statistics, broken down by sector as follows: 23 agricultural statistics, 19 forestry statistics, 10 fish statistics and one hunting statistic.  Development plans for the near future are presented in the statistical programme by sector.  The statistical programme will be updated the next time at the end of 2023.