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Hectares of the agricultural holding utilised agricultural area which are subject to drainage <a href="#drain" aria-describedby="footnote-label" id="drain-ref"></a>, the artificial removal of excess surface water or ground-water to prevent inundation, by means of surface or sub-surface conduits. It does not include the natural drainage of excess water into lakes, swamps and rivers. While it is hard to establish a scale of drainage (ditch dug or drainage channel) and/or provide a specific threshold, one could argue that drainage can be measured by the effort in terms of labour, investments, machinery input or any human physical activity to drain the land. As such activities involve considerable amount of costs, farmers will only consider this practice when it is really necessary to artificially drain the land to improve agricultural production.

It might be very hard to judge the quality of drainage. Furthermore, the drainage could also decompose during the reference year due to specific weather conditions. Therefore, we recommend collecting information only about the existence of drainage.