Food consumption
Methodology | Contents |
This publication presents the results of food, drink, and cigarette consumption statistics for 2001. For its data to be easy to use, it brings the results in time series consisting of data for 1990 and for all the years since 1995.
The data food and drink consumption were obtained by applying the balance method to the following statistical information:
§ Gross agricultural product in the Czech Republic in 2001
§ Definitive data on produce of agricultural plants in 2001
§ Monthly industrial production of selected commodities in 2001 (January through December)
§ Initial and final surplus stores of agricultural enterprises
§ Initial and final surplus stores of food processing enterprises
§ Import and export of food products based on customs statistics (as at 31 August 2002)
§ Private home production of food, food in kind
Our calculations were further based on data received from the Ministry of Agriculture, the State Veterinary Office, the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, and other food-production related institutions and organizations.
In spite of the fact that in food consumption statistics there is no binding classification standard either in the Czech Republic or internationally (Eurostat), the Czech Statistics Office decided to innovate the breakdown which it had so far used in this area, and we have worked out a classification that will, hopefully, make retrieving information easier. Individual food consumption items have been reshuffled so that now they correspond with first two divisions of the CZ-COICOP classification (the Czech version of the international COICOP standard designed to enable international comparisons and already used by the Household Budget Surveys statistics).
Food consumption items constitute two basic divisions: 01 – Food and non-alcoholic beverages, 02 – Alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. Further, the divisions break down into groups and subgroups.
The food, beverage, and cigarette consumption data were calculated as average per capita figures. The populations used are mid-year populations (as at 1 July of the given year). The following table shows the mid-year populations in 1990 and 1995-2001.
year | mid-year population | year | mid-year population |
1990 | 10 364 266 | 1998 | 10 294 947 |
1995 | 10 330 759 | 1999 | 10 282 784 |
1996 | 10 315 353 | 2000 | 10 272 503 |
1997 | 10 303 642 | 2001 | 10 287 482 |
The methods used in calculating the results are for virtually all the items congruent with those used in preceding years, which makes it possible to follow food and beverage consumption in the Czech Republic in time series. With some food commodities, namely vegetable and fruit products, however, the current methodology does not allow to output data that were available in the past.
“Vegetables in terms of fresh produce weights” and “Fruits in terms of fresh produce weights” are fully comparable along the whole time series. These items include not only fruit and vegetables consumed fresh but also consumption of vegetable and fruit products. Until 1991 consumption related to individual kinds of vegetable (fruit) used to be final and of fresh produce only, since 1992 the term has been broadened to include also produce consumed by fruit and vegetable processing industries. This means that, with these items, 1992 breaks the time line, and so data collected before this date are not fully comparable with later figures.