TidyTuesday (2026) Week 7: Agricultural Production Statistics in New Zealand

This week we are exploring agriculture production statistics in New Zealand using data compiled from StatsNZ. Sheep have long outnumbered people in New Zealand, but the ratio of sheep to people peaked in the 1980s and has been in steady decline.

Timeline of Sheep in NZ

1. R code

# | echo: true
# | eval: false
# | warning: false
# | message: false

if(!(require(tidyverse))){install.packages("tidyverse"); library(tidyverse)}
if (!requireNamespace("CustomGGPlot2Theme", quietly = TRUE)) {
  devtools::install_local("~/Documents/Documents/Coding/CustomGGPlot2Theme", dependencies = TRUE)
}
library(CustomGGPlot2Theme)

if(!(require(patchwork))){install.packages("patchwork"); library(patchwork)}

options(scipen=999)

dataset <- readr::read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/main/data/2026/2026-02-17/dataset.csv')

sheep <- dataset %>% 
  filter(value_label == "Number of sheep") %>% 
  select(year_ended_june, measure, value) %>% 
  mutate(value = as.integer(value)) %>% 
  filter(str_detect(measure, "Total")) 

peak_year <- sheep %>%
  group_by(year_ended_june) %>%
  summarize(total_val = sum(value)) %>%
  filter(total_val == max(total_val)) %>%
  pull(year_ended_june)

labels_data <- sheep %>%
  group_by(year_ended_june) %>%
  summarize(total_val = sum(value)) %>%
  filter(year_ended_june %in% c(1935, 2024, peak_year))


sheep <- dataset %>% 
  filter(value_label == "Number of sheep") %>% 
  select(year_ended_june, measure, value) %>% 
  mutate(value = as.integer(value)) %>% 
  filter(str_detect(measure, "Total"))  %>% 
  filter(measure != "Total Sheep other than Ewes/Ewe Hoggets put to Ram") |> 
  mutate(measure = str_wrap(measure, width = 20))



gap_plot <- ggplot(sheep, aes(x = year_ended_june, y = value, fill = str_wrap(measure, width = 10))) +
  geom_area(color = "black", linewidth = 0.2, alpha = 0.8) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = function(x) format(x, big.mark = ",", scientific = FALSE)) +
  labs(
    title = "Total Number of Sheep and Rams in New Zealand over the years",
    x = "Year",
    y = "Number of Sheep",
    fill = str_wrap("Type of Sheep", 10)
  ) +
  geom_text(
    data = labels_data, 
    aes(x = year_ended_june, y = total_val, label = scales::comma(total_val)),
    inherit.aes = FALSE, 
    vjust = -1,          
    size = 4,
    fontface = "bold"
  ) +
  Custom_Style() +
  theme(legend.position = "bottom", text = element_text(size = 15))