Agricultural census of 1895
In the history of Hungarian agricultural statistics a new era was opened by the general agricultural census of 1895, which can be considered as the basis of modern Hungarian agricultural statistics. This large-scale attempt was the first to provide a comprehensive, reliable and, compared to similar censuses of other countries, high-level picture of the Hungarian agriculture.
The census provided by Act VIII of 1895 had to be implemented in ten days, with the reference date of 20 November. The implementation was the responsibility of senior municipal officials. The Minister of Agriculture provided the forms free of charge to municipal authorities. The costs incurred during the implementation had to be covered by municipal authorities from their own budget. 300 thousand Hungarian forints were allocated to cover the costs of the Office’’s tasks, i.e. processing. (In 1895 the annual budget of the Office was HUF 226 thousand, and the population census of 1890 cost HUF 200 thousand.)
The four main types of questionnaires of the survey represented successive levels of aggregation.
When they were planned, good care was taken that there should be aspects of checking both within and between the questionnaires.
I. Individual questionnaires served to collect data at the level of farms. The questionnaire was made in two versions:
I. a. to survey farms both using land area and having livestock.
I. b. to survey those not using land area.
II. Collective lists of individual questionnaires, of which two versions were made, too, in line with individual questionnaires. Collective lists, on the one hand, were used to disseminate information promptly on major results, and performed a function of checking on the other hand. The data on the collective list had to be equal to the corresponding data collected on the individual questionnaires.
III. The questionnaire titled "General economic conditions of villages" covered data on yields, damage caused by nature, crop rotation, the number of rural constables and herdsmen, land prices and male animals, in addition to data for checking purposes. (Several of these would have been preferred to be surveyed by individual surveys, but since that would have increased the labour and cost burdens beyond measure, they were observed at the level of villages only.)
IV. The questionnaire titled "General economic conditions of districts and towns" contained information on the demand for seeds, the specific weight of crop, the value of livestock, etc.
The total material of the survey was published in 5 large-format volumes, on a total of some 2000 pages, in a surprisingly short time, between 1897 and 1900.
Out of the five volumes the first contains the most important data broken down in detail by villages, the second volume was the directory of farmers, the third comprised agricultural production in 1895-1896 by counties, the fourth the data of the census by groups of farm size, and in the fifth - summary - volume several observations of less significance were published in addition to summary data.
A valuable material of the first volume is a study that reported on all the stages of the development of Hungarian agricultural statistics till then. An inestimable value of this study from the point of view of Hungarian statistical research is that by searching for the first traces of Hungarian agricultural statistics it presented all the earlier surveys or experiments leading through one or the other branch of the field of agriculture to the large census at the end of the 19th century.
Links (in Hungarian):
http://www.ksh.hu/statszemle_archive/viewer.html?ev=1995&szam=12&old=72&lap=3
http://www.ksh.hu/statszemle_archive/viewer.html?ev=1963&szam=08-09&old=82&lap=7