The French Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament today reached a provisional political agreement on a new regulation on statistics on agricultural inputs and products (SAIO). This regulation is part of the modernisation of the European system of agricultural statistics. Improving and strengthening statistics on agricultural inputs and products in agriculture should help to improve knowledge of agricultural practices and production in connection with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Green Pact for Europe and the "farm to fork" strategy.

The revision of the SAIO regulation concerns data on agricultural production, crop products, agricultural inputs and prices. It will aim to provide more accurate statistics on agricultural inputs (prices of seeds, pesticides, feed, etc.) and products (crop and livestock production and prices) collected from farms, administrative sources, intermediaries (dairies, etc.), wholesale entities and market organizations.

The co-legislators agreed on the scope of the new SAIO regulation, the frequency of transmission of the data collected, in particular for plant protection products (PPP) and organic farming. As regards organic farming, the co-legislators agreed on the need to ensure that the available statistics are consistent with other agricultural production statistics by integrating them into the datasets.

For plant protection products (PPPs), a transitional period of three years from 2025 has been agreed, with an intermediate data collection for the reference year 2026. From base year 2028 onwards, data collection will be annual with annual publication from 2030 onwards. However, these annual data collections are conditional on the existence of electronic registers for professional users of plant protection products. The collection of PPP data will be based on a common list of representative crops, which will evolve during the transition period. The SAIO Regulation provides for European funding during this transitional period to help national statistical authorities prepare for the annual collection of PPP data.

Finally, the co-legislators agreed that the revised SAIO regulation should contain appropriate safeguard clauses to avoid an increased administrative burden for farmers and national administrations.