Use and users of FADN data in Italy

The Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) is a sample survey that annually gathers information from more than 80,000 European farms. Its main aim is to provide data to the EU Commission used in the assessment of farm profitability and in the evaluation of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) impacts.FADN results are also used and published nationally in almost all the Member States. The Italian fadn (named RICA - Rete Italiana di Contabilità Agricola) provides data for stakeholders and researchers, serving as an important source of information for specific analysis and meeting a wide range of policy needs.

Data are stored in an online database, available for institutional users under an agreement or a formal accession request. For non-institutional users, a public Datawarehouse supplies/provides selected information already aggregated by farm type, economic size, and region. Like other surveys, FADN can be considered as a public good, whose general benefit and utility depends also on its impact on users. One way to evaluate these benefits is the identification of users, the data used and their level of satisfaction. This monitoring activity is not performed in the Italian FADN: users and usage are not always tracked and the information about their satisfaction is lacking.

The paper investigates this aspect (which has been called “inherent data dissemination” for the first time, focusing on the extent and ways in which fadn is made available: the most important area of analysis covered by the data. Two instruments are examined: the FADN database online (BDR) and the request forms submitted to CREA to ask for customized tables based on a set of selected variables. The first tool has been analyzed by submitting a questionnaire to the list of users, while for the request forms, all the submissions processed during the period 2011-2020 have been examined. [Publisher's text]