FAO - Agricultural Census

The development of the agricultural sector will depend on land use decisions and governance from the global to the local level. Improving food security from global to local level will require land governance that creates incentives for greater productivity and improves access to nutritious food for the poor and vulnerable, without creating further strain on environmental services. Smallholders have a vital role to play, both because they produce much of the world’s food and because they represent a large share of the world’s poor and food insecure. The WCA reports on land tenure (ownership, tenancy, multiple and other), informing about total area covered, share and number of agricultural holdings. At the local level, land tenure security, along with access to other resources, is linked with increased productivity and investments in land fertility, which in turn can increase food security. Hence, the WCA indicates weather food (in)security is related to the national land policy.

 

 

The WCA is released in rounds, WCA 2020 (link is external) being the current product in process. Country data for a ten-year period is gradually dissimilated, presently referring to national censuses conducted between 2016 and 2025. The country specific censuses are conducted at national level every five or ten years, depending on individual procedures. Updated Guidelines (link is external) for the WCA 2020 underline the importance of data comparability and make emerging information needs of the 21st century a central theme. Innovative survey techniques and the coverage of new topics is included in the present methodology. A new series of  workshop (link is external)s aims at informing experts.

 

 

Since 1950, the FAO promotes the use of standard international concepts, definitions and methodology (link is external) for national agricultural censuses. The introduced terminology enhances the comparability of the results. However, the methodology applied varies from country to country. While some countries conduct a complete survey, others work with an enumeration of a large sample. There is no clear distinction between the results. Strongly recommended is a modular approach, which encourages institutions to complete a full enumeration covering basic information with extended questionnaires requested from a sample. Most efficiently, the agricultural census is coordinated with the population census. The recommended approach is lined up with the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics (link is external), and the UN Guidelines on Population and Housing Censuses (link is external) and documented in the World Programme of the Census of Agriculture 2020 Volume I: Programme, concepts and definitions (link is external) und Volume 2: Operational Guidelines (link is external).

 

 

The available dataset contains 18 indicators of agricultural statistics gathered over a period of about 25 years. The country data are the principal findings of the census; more detailed information can be found in the national census reports (link is external). FAO links to the agricultural surveys conducted by national institutions in rounds WCA 2020 (link is external), WCA 2010 (link is external), WCA 2000 (link is external) and WCA 1990 (link is external). The WCA archive (link is external) contains reports of WCA 1950, 1960, 1970 and 1980. The latest report on Main Results and Metadata (link is external) by Country is available for the period 2006 – 2015.

 

 

Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and governments of 127 countries and territories.