| | Acknowledgements
The invaluable assistance from all of those who provided input to this publication is greatly appreciated. In particular, a number of people merit special recognition, as follows:
From the Statistics and Data Development Unit, AAF: Karyn Andruchow, Marion Harry, Gail Atkinson, Guangzhi Liu and Albert Shaw, for the many hours spent in working directly with the processing and formatting of the custom data.
From the Information Packaging Centre, AAF: Scott Reid (Head), Dave Orey, and John Gilmore, for supporting this publication and in the design of its cover.
From Statistics Canada: Bernard Houle (User Services and Marketing, Ottawa), and Bruce Meyers (Edmonton), for providing in a timely manner, the custom data used in this publication.
And finally, personal thanks to Unit Leader Bob Prather for sharing many ideas, and coaching and mentoring throughout the process.
Introduction
This publication presents farm data taken from the 2001 Census of Agriculture, conducted on May 15, 2001. The data is specific to Alberta, and unlike an earlier spring release by Statistics Canada, targets a lower level of geography, namely, County, Municipality, and Improvement District. The data for this lower level of geography was obtained through a special custom run from Statistics Canada.
As background, on May 15, 2002, farm data relating to the 2001 Census of Agriculture for Canada was released by Statistics Canada on its website: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/95f0302x/95f0302x2001001-eng.htm. At the time of the release, data for all farm variables were presented at four levels of geography, namely, national, provincial, Census Agriculture Region (CAR), and Census Division (CD). The latter two essentially presented data at the sub-provincial level, and in the case of Alberta is tailored to its seven CAR's and nineteen CD's Unfortunately, while these types of data aggregation are very useful, one limitation is that these are sometimes still too broad to accommodate the needs of some clients, particularly, those working with even lower levels of geography, such as County, Municipality, etc.
The 2001 Census of Agriculture data contained in this publication is for selected farm variables on agriculture. The data is presented in a tabular format, by County, Municipality and Improvement District, which are subsequently rolled up to what was formerly the five AAF agricultural administrative regions (South, Central, North East, North West and Peace). It is important to note that while AAF no longer uses the agricultural administrative regions, these have been maintained for the convenience of users, to facilitate data comparisons with some of the previous Census years.
Also worth noting, is that data confidentiality (as designated by an "x") at the Municipal level, has resulted in some regional totals not adding up to the provincial total, as the confidentiality has led to data suppression.
Users are encouraged to refer to the section containing the Census definitions and notes when attempting to interpret the data. Also, for spatial data interpretation, please refer to the Alberta map with its regional boundaries, and counties classified by region.
In an ongoing attempt to improve this publication, comments or questions should be directed to:
Reynold N. Jaipaul
Livestock Statistician
Statistics & Data Development Unit
#302, 7000 - 113 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T6H 5T6
Telephone: 780-427-5376
E-mail: reynold.jaipaul@gov.ab.ca
Fax : 780-427-5220
September 2002 |
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