Labour force
Annual work unit (AWU)
Annual work unit (AWU) is the full-time equivalent employment, i.e. the total hours worked divided by the average annual hours worked in full-time jobs in the country. One annual work unit corresponds to the work performed by one person who is occupied on an agricultural holding on a full-time basis.
The minimum working hours for work to be considered full-time are defined in the national rules governing contracts of employment. If these do not indicate the number of annual hours, then 1800 hours is to be taken as the minimum figure (225 working days of eight hours each).
As the volume of agricultural labour is being calculated on the basis of full-time equivalent jobs, no person can therefore represent more than one AWU. This constraint holds even if it is known that someone is working on agricultural activities for more than the number of hours defining full-time in the Member State concerned).
Full time working days
A full time working day is the normal working day of regular workers employed on a full-time basis. It is any day of such length that the worker is paid the salary or any kind of remuneration (wages, profits, or other payments including payments in kind) for a full day's work, during which the work performed is of the kind normally carried out by a full time agricultural worker.
Days of leave and sickness do not count as working days.
Area
For the purpose of IFS areas are transmitted in hectares (10.000 m2). The are (100 m2) and its multiple the hectare are part of the SI units permitted only in specialized fields (area of farmland and building land), which are defined in the Directive No 80/181/EEC on units of measurement.
Livestock
Heads of animals
The heads of animals are given on a reference day during the reference period (see 2.7.3 above).
It is known that the number of livestock in a year may fluctuate. For some animal types (e.g. poultry) there may be a period between production cycles in which the housing is empty, due to temporary breaks in the production cycle (e.g. regular sanitary cleaning of animal houses, disease outbreaks, or similar reasons) and a lower number or no livestock are on the holding.
Because IFS is a structural survey, such holdings should still be recorded to avoid illusionary fluctuations in the data. The livestock of these holdings will correspond to the number of animals just before the sanitary cleaning (provided they no longer exist in any other holding).
Livestock unit
The livestock unit, abbreviated as LSU (or sometimes as LU), is a standard measurement unit that allows the aggregation of the various categories of livestock of various species and age as per convention, via the use of specific coefficients established on the basis of the nutritional or feed requirement of each type of animal, in order to enable a comparison. The coefficients for IFS are adopted in accordance with Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2018/1091.
Table 4 – Livestock units in accordance with Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2018/1091
Type of animal | Characteristic of animal | Coefficient |
Bovine animals | Less than 1 year old | 0.4 |
1 to less than 2 years old | 0.7 | |
Male, 2 years old and over | 1 | |
Heifers, 2 years old and over | 0.8 | |
Dairy cows | 1 | |
Non-dairy cows | 0.8 | |
Sheep and goats | 0.1 | |
Pigs | Piglets, live weight of under 20 kg | 0.027 |
Breeding sows, live weight 50 kg and over | 0.5 | |
Other pigs | 0.3 | |
Poultry | Broilers | 0.007 |
Laying hens | 0.014 | |
Other poultry | ||
Turkeys | 0.03 | |
Ducks | 0.01 | |
Geese | 0.02 | |
Ostriches | 0.35 | |
Other poultry fowls n.e.c. | 0.001 | |
Rabbits, breeding females | 0.02 |
Table 5 – Other livestock units
Type of animal | Characteristic of animal | Coefficient |
Equidae | 0.8 |
Number of hives
For bees, the unit adopted is the number of hives.
Holdings with livestock
Holdings with livestock are agricultural holdings with bovine animals, goats , sheep , pig , poultry , rabbits, beehives or livestock n.e.c.
Holdings with livestock can have zero livestock units (LSU) as LSU is only calculated for bovine animals, goats, sheep, pigs, poultry, and female breeding rabbits. Holdings with livestock and no LSU are holdings which have beehives or livestock n.e.c.
Animal housing
In the IFS core, the number of animals present in the farm for each class is collected for a reference day.
For the module on animal housing and manure management the relevant units are the average number of animals and the number of places.
Average number of animals (for reporting purposes)
For the purpose of reporting on greenhouse gas emissions (CH4 emissions from enteric fermentation, CH4 emissions from manure management and N2O emissions from manure management) a basic characterisation of livestock, gathered from official national statistics is sufficient (IPCC, 2006). The value to be used for this purpose, even for the simplest methodology (Tier 1) is the annual average population, which is calculated using the following formula:
Annual average animal population (IPCC) In case of static animal populations, (e.g., dairy cows, breeding swine, layers), the annual average population will be the same as the one-time animal inventory data. But it may not be so for populations of meat animals, such as broilers, beef cattle and swine. The CLRTAP methodology has a different approach to the calculation of the annual average population, by using a combination of number of places and number of empty days (EEA, 2017), but it leads to equivalent results as the calculation proposed by IPCC which is given above. Annual average animal population (CLRTAP) Where "days empty" is the product of the number of production cycles or rounds per year and the duration of the period during which the animal place is empty |
A basic calculator (functioning in Word) is provided in Annex III.
Note that the average number of animals across housing types is additive.
Animals that spend part of their time grazing are also to be included in the calculation.
Number of places
The unit for assessing the dimension of animal housing is the number of places.
The term "places" is used in the sense of the stable capacity during the reference period.
The number of places in the animal house which are temporarily empty during the reference period is also recorded if they are normally occupied. For animals always outdoors "places" refers to the number of animals that could be supported in the holding (assuming a reasonable LSU/ha of pasture).
Are "places" the same of "maximum number of places occupied in the reference period"? No. Places are to be interpreted as the stable capacity during the reference period. |
Date Time
Date and time shall follow the ISO 8601 norm. The main feature of the norm is that datetime information is ordered so that the largest temporal term (the year) is placed to the left and successive smaller terms are placed to the right of the previous term (date elements can be separated by "-" and time elements by ":" to improve human readability). The norm also fixes a reference calendar as the Gregorian calendar. The norm also prescribes as a minimum a four digit year (YYYY). Note that YYYYMM is not allowed for the representation of a month and YYYY-MM is to be used instead.
Example of a day: 2017-07-31 (YYYY-MM-DD) or 20170131 (YYYYMMDD)
Example of a month: 2017-03 (YYYY-MM) but not 201703
Example of a date with time in UTC: 2017-07-31T07:59:19+00:00
Power
In IFS2023 tractors are classified according to the kW (kilowatt) of their motor. A watt is a measure of energy. A watt is the measure of the rate of power flow. When one ampere (amp) flows through an electrical difference of one volt (V), this is equal to one watt (W) . There are one thousand watts in a kilowatt.
Another common unit of power for tractors is the horsepower (hp), the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. DIN 66036 defines one metric horsepower as the power to raise a mass of 75 kilograms against the Earth's gravitational force over a distance of one metre in one second: 75 kg × 9.80665 ms2 × 1 m 1 s = 75 kgf⋅ms = 1 PS. This is equivalent to 735.49875 W, or 98.6% of an imperial mechanical horsepower.
In 1972, the PS was replaced by the kilowatt as the official power-measuring unit in EEC directives.
Table 6 – Correspondence of kW and hp
kW | hp |
15 | 20 |
25 | 34 |
40 | 55 |
60 | 82 |
80 | 100 |
90 | 120 |
100 | 135 |
111 | 150 |
120 | 160 |
150 | 200 |