The UK Government has released statistics on the crop areas claimed under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) in 2018 compared to the previously published official crop areas from the Defra June Survey of Agriculture.
These are Experimental Statistics and this is only the second year in which comparisons have been made. The statistics have not yet been shown to meet the quality criteria for National Statistics branding, but are being published to involve users in their development.
Some of the BPS crop areas are showing a greater divergence from the June survey estimates in 2018 than in earlier years. More analyses of the two sources will be carried out to try to identify reasons for these differences.