Question

What is the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics?

Answer 1

The Global Strategy for Improving Agricultural and Rural Statistics has been developed by the World Bank in cooperation with the UNSC working groups of the FAO and Friends of the Chair and through comprehensive stakeholder consultations.

Additional recognition is required by the Mozambique National Statistical Institute, which hosted the International Statistical Institute Satellite Meeting on Agricultural Statistics. The meeting was coordinated in collaboration with the African Development Bank, Eurostat, FAO, 21st Century Statistics Partnership for Growth, UN Statistics Division, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the World Bank. The Fund for African Cooperation, the World Bank and the United States. Agriculture Department is also recognized for the financial support provided to implement the Global Strategy over the nearly two-year period.

The first pillar is to create a minimum set of core information to be collected by countries to meet current and emerging demands.
The second pillar is to incorporate agriculture into national statistical frameworks to meet the needs of policy makers and other users who rely on comparable data across locations and over time. Integration will be accomplished by introducing a set of methodologies that includes creating a master sample model for agriculture, implementing an integrated survey framework, and delivering results in a data management system. The third pillar is the foundation that will provide the sustainability of the agricultural statistics system through governance and statistical capacity building.

The approach describes the key elements for achieving integration. Integrating agriculture into the national statistical structure of a country will begin with developing a master sample framework for agriculture. This will be the basis for all sample survey and census-based data collection. Depending on the criteria to include both households and farms as statistical units, the master sample frame is to be built. This offers a link between the context of the census and land use.

The Global Strategy offers a blueprint for a concerted, long-term plan to tackle the deterioration of farm statistics systems. Many efforts related to the goal of improving agricultural statistics provided valuable feedback to the Global Strategy's growth. These include monitoring outcomes in less than ideal conditions for agriculture and rural development: