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Abstract
This is the abstract section. One paragraph only (Maximum 200 words). The
environment both affects agricultural production, via soils, weather, water availability etc
and agriculture affects the environment via its impact locally on landscape, water, soil
nutrition and biodiversity and more widely via its impact on climate change. Locating
agriculture within its spatial environment is thus very important in making decisions by
farmers, policy makers and other stakeholders. Within the EU, countries collect detailed
farm data to understand the technical and financial performance of farms as part of the
Farm Accountancy Data Network. However knowledge of the spatial-environmental
context of these farms is very limited as the spatial location of farms within these surveys
is very limited. In this paper we develop a methodology to geo-reference farms in this data.
We chose Ireland as a case study as the dominant farm systems are pasture based mainly
animal systems. Thus the local environment is particularly relevant to output. Agriculture
in Ireland is also amongst the largest as a proportion of the size of the economy and thus
the environmental impact is likely to be more important.
Applying this methodology has a number of challenges because Ireland does not have a
system of post codes. In addition there are complications in relation to place names which
may be in English or Irish or indeed a combination, often with non harmonised spellings
and often with non-unique place names. The methodology we develop in this paper
overcomes these difficulties allowing us to link, using resulting GIS coordinates, localised
environmental to the individual farm data. The primary objective of the survey is to
provide a nationally representative picture of farm outputs and outcomes. As a result the
survey may not necessarily be representative spatially or the pattern of environment x farm
system. Within the paper we assess the relative spatial representativity.