'Instituto Nacional de Investigacion y Tecnologia Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA)'
Abstract
Agricultural activity in Galicia, North West Spain, is carried out on farms that are characterized by a diversity of land
use and production models, a variety of farm sizes, and considerable geographical dispersion. Any attempt of Agricultural
Production Planning aimed at characterizing production models requires a method of analysing data and obtaining technicaleconomic
results from farms in the different areas. Models based on average statistical data are limited because they represent
farms that do not exist in reality. This study develops a methodology to characterize and group dairy farms into different
types according to the following basic variables: land use, size classes and production systems. The information used in
this study was microdata from the 1999 Census of Agriculture. The methodology developed was also applied to microdata
from the 1989 Census of Agriculture, thus obtaining significant information about the evolution of agricultural activity.
The tools used in the analysis were Microsoft Access and Excel, and an application that was developed using Microsoft
Visual Basic. The methodology presented can be used to analyse the evolution of the sector or to model future trends