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(1) A transparent, comprehensive and reliable statistical knowledge base is necessary to design, implement, monitor, evaluate and review Union policies related to agriculture, in particular the common agricultural policy (CAP), including rural development measures, as well as Union policies relating to, inter alia, the environment, climate change adaptation and mitigation, land use, regions, public health, food safety, plant protection, sustainable use of pesticides, veterinary medicinal usage and the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Those statistics can also be useful for the purposes of monitoring and assessment of the impact of agriculture on pollinators and vital soil organisms.

(2) The collection of statistical data, in particular on agricultural input and output, should aim, inter alia, to inform an evidence-based decision-making process with updated, high-quality and accessible data, in particular the data necessary for the development of agro-environmental indicators, and to support and evaluate the progress of the European Green Deal with the related Farm to Fork Strategy and the Biodiversity Strategy, the zero pollution action plan and the action plan for organic production in the Union, and future CAP reforms. A key element for the achievement of the European Green Deal objectives is the transition towards multifunctional agriculture capable of producing safe and sufficient food while providing positive environmental outputs.

(3) High-quality harmonised, coherent and comparable statistical data are important for the assessment of the state and trends of agricultural input and output in the Union in order to provide meaningful and precise data on the environmental and economic impact of agriculture and on the pace of the transition to more sustainable agricultural practices. The data collected should also relate to the functioning of markets and food security, so as to ensure access to sufficient and high-quality food, and to the assessment of the sustainability as well as the environmental, economic and social impacts and performance of Union and national policies, as well as to the assessment of the sustainability and impact of the development of new business models. Those data include, but are not limited to, livestock and meat statistics, the production and use of eggs and the production and use of milk and milk products. Statistics on the area, yield and production of arable crops, vegetables, permanent crops and grasslands and commodity balances are also important. Moreover, statistics on the sales and use of plant protection products, fertilisers and veterinary medicinal products, in particular antibiotics in feeding stuffs, are needed.

(4) An international evaluation of agricultural statistics led to the creation of a global strategy of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for improving agricultural and rural statistics. That global strategy was endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2010. European agricultural statistics should, where appropriate, follow the recommendations of that global strategy.

(5) Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishes a legal framework for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics based on common statistical principles. That Regulation sets out quality criteria and refers to the need to minimise the response burden on survey respondents and to contribute to the more general objective of reducing the administrative burden.

(6) The Strategy for Agricultural Statistics for 2020 and beyond, endorsed by the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) in November 2015, envisages the adoption of two framework regulations covering all aspects of Union legislation on agricultural statistics, with the exception of economic accounts for agriculture (EAA). This Regulation is one of those two framework regulations and should complement the framework regulation which has already been adopted, namely Regulation (EU) 2018/1091 of the European Parliament and of the Council .

(8) The statistics required in accordance with Commission Regulation (EC) No 617/2008 have been collected within the ESS, meeting some but not all of its quality standards. Those statistics support Union and national policies in the longer term and should be integrated as European statistics to ensure the availability and quality of the data. In order to avoid double reporting from the Member States, the statistical requirements under that Regulation should be deleted.

(9) A large part of the agricultural area at Union level consists of grasslands. The production of those areas was not considered to be important in the past, so no production data have been included in crop statistics. As the impact of grasslands and ruminants on the environment has become more important due to climate change, statistics on grassland production including animal grazing are now needed.

(10) For the purposes of European agricultural statistics, the feasibility of maximising the use of pre-existing data collected under CAP obligations, without creating new obligations and administrative burden, should be assessed.

(11) For the purposes of harmonisation and comparability of information on agricultural input and output with information on the structure of agricultural holdings and to further implement the Strategy for Agricultural Statistics for 2020 and beyond, this Regulation should complement Regulation (EU) 2018/1091.

(12) Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council does not cover agricultural price statistics, but their availability and coherence with the EAA should be ensured. Statistics on agricultural input and output should therefore cover statistics on agricultural input prices that are coherent with the EAA. In order to allow EAA calculations and comparable price indices, agricultural output price data need to be available in Member States.

(13) In light of the European Green Deal, the CAP and the objective of reducing dependence on pesticides, it is important to provide for high-quality annual statistics on the use of plant protection products in relation to environmental, health and economic issues. The lack of electronic records of the professional use of plant protection products, which could be used for statistical purposes, at Union level is a major obstacle to increasing the periodicity of data collection on the use of plant protection products in agriculture from once every five years to once per year. In order to give the NSIs time to prepare for the production of annual statistics on the use of plant protection products on a permanent basis, provision should be made in this Regulation for a transitional regime.

(14) Data regarding the placing on the market and use of pesticides to be submitted pursuant to Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council should be used in accordance with the relevant provisions of that Directive and of that Regulation for the purposes of the requirements of this Regulation. The data disseminated on plant protection products should include the active substances placed on the market and used in agricultural activities by crop and its related treated areas.

(15) Comparable statistics from all Member States on agricultural input and output are important to determine the development of the CAP and to monitor the CAP’s implementation through the national Strategic Plans in view of the CAP’s contribution to the targets of the European Green Deal. Standard classifications and common definitions should therefore be used insofar as possible for variables.

(16) The coherence, comparability and interoperability of the data and the uniformity of the reporting formats are prerequisites for the preparation of European agricultural statistics, in particular as regards the efficiency of the collection, processing and dissemination procedures and the quality of the results.

(17) The data needed to compile statistics should be collected in a manner that minimises costs and administrative burden on respondents, including farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises and Member States. It is therefore necessary to identify possible owners of sources of the required data and ensure that those sources can be used for statistics.

(18) The data sets to be transmitted cover several statistical domains. In order to maintain a flexible approach that allows the statistics to be adapted when data requirements change, only the domains, topics and detailed topics should be specified in the basic regulation, with the detailed data sets specified by means of implementing acts. The collection of the detailed data sets should not impose significant additional costs which result in a disproportionate and unjustified burden on respondents and on Member States.