Using statistics to boost agriculture

Developed countries of the world deeply involved in agriculture have since realised this and have taken serious actions, whereas other countries in the developing part of the world, especially Africa have continued to shy away from this important ingredient of agricultural development and food security.Against this backdrop, improving the quality, availability and relevance of data […]

Developed countries of the world deeply involved in agriculture have since realised this and have taken serious actions, whereas other countries in the developing part of the world, especially Africa have continued to shy away from this important ingredient of agricultural development and food security.
Against this backdrop, improving the quality, availability and relevance of data on food and agriculture have become a key priority as Africa strives to develop more effective policies to tackle its persistent food security problems.
This issue took centre stage recently as an unprecedented number of experts from 35 countries met in Rabat, Morocco for the 23rd session of the African Commission on Agricultural Statistics (AFCAS), an FAO statutory body, to review regional data, new tools and ideas for global coordination.
“We need timely, accurate, and reliable statistics to give us a better picture of how agriculture and food security are affected by, and how they impact, eco-nomic, environmental and social factors. Ultimately, this kind of information can be used by decision makers to develop policies, programmes and investments that improve people’s lives,” said Josef Schmidhuber, Deputy Director of the FAO Statistics Division.
About 100 senior statisticians will discuss country experiences with the World Programme for the  Census of Agriculture and the rollout of the Global Strategy to Improve Rural and Agricultural Statistics.
The experts will also look at advances in gathering envi-ronmental, economic and food security statistics on issues like greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural investments, livestock, and sex disaggregated – or gender related – data for land ownership.   
Reliable statistics are vital in tracking both country needs and achievements. For instance, accurate government expenditure data are needed to track country commitments to spend at least 10 percent of total expenditures on agriculture, in keeping with the Maputo Declaration of 2003.
So far, statistics on government spending show that only Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Niger and Senegal have met or exceeded the Maputo target.   
“So often, the need for statistics arises on short notice, but it takes time to build the data collection infrastructure and to put a system in place to process and analyse this kind of information. You can’t wait until there’s a sudden policy demand. You need to build up capacities over time so that you’re ready to respond to data needs as they emerge,” Sangita Dubey of the FAO Statistics Division said.
Demonstrations of new versions of two information technology platforms for sharing data and analysis, FAOSTAT, which hosts the world’s largest repository of agricultural time-series data and allows for quick retrieval, comparisons and analysis of data relating to food and agriculture for some 200 countries; and CountrySTAT, which integrates information from different national sources and harmonises them according to international standards and quality requirements, will be carried out at the meeting.
AFCAS meets every two years to review and identify priorities for the development of national statistical systems in the African region.