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Staff Correspondent, The Daily Star, 11 May 2008
The fourth agricultural census begins across the country from today after over two decades, covering both rural and urban areas for the first time.
The last full-fledged agricultural survey was conducted in two phases for rural and urban areas in 1983-84. The fourth, 15-day survey will end on May 25.
The census will collect information on the members of each household, how many of them work the land, volume of their land, use of land, agricultural tools, cattle and domestic birds owned by them and data on loans and fallow land.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has taken all preparations for the census and set up a control room at its headquarters in a bid to successfully wrap up the survey, said a press release.
The BBS has appointed 142,000 enumerators and 20,000 supervisors from among educated, unemployed people in order to conduct the survey. Besides, it has assigned from its ranks eight divisional census coordinators, 22 regional census coordinators, 76 district census coordinators and 1938 upazila/zonal census coordinators.
The first sample survey on agriculture took place in 1960. A sample survey was carried out after independence, in 1977 and the first full-fledged survey in 1983-84. A survey in rural areas was conducted in 1996-97 and a sample-basis survey in 2005, the press release said.
The census report will be published by June, 2009.
Subash Dasgupta, The Daily Star, 04 June 2008
THIS year’s agriculture census 2008-09 is in progress in the country, and the time fixed for sample surveys at field level was May 11-29. The survey report will be released in June 2009. It will be good if the report can be publicly available in time.The last report of the agriculture census, 1996, was released in July 1999. An agriculture census is essential to obtain the detailed data/statistics/information necessary to keep the nation informed of the changes in the country’s agriculture.
Agriculture census, which covers a wide range of activities and huge numbers of farm and non-farm holdings, is indeed a difficult task. The on-going census, for the first time, will also cover urban agriculture. Conducted every ten years, the agriculture census is the only source of official data that is used for planning and forecasting. Although such type of activity has national significance, unfortunately, so far, it has received very little attention from our media and concerned stakeholders.
The current census is being conducted after 13 years, which is a long time, and a lot of changes occurred in Bangladesh agriculture during this period. The first agriculture census was conducted in 1960 during “pre-green revolution” period. Since then, we have been witnessing gradual changes in our agricultural development process, which has become more rapid since the late 1990s.
The accelerated changes, which are taking place should be identified through the census. It should be noted that all concerned persons would want to know the dynamics of such changes, and also who are the driving forces behind it. It is not enough to know only the changes in the classified farm categories and land holdings belonging to them.
Expectation from this census is much higher than from earlier ones. A need is felt for a wide range of accurate information about farm production, cropping patterns, cropping pattern- based land area estimation rather than commodity-based, farming systems, management practices and finances, as well as personal characteristics of farmers and farm household members.
Inadequacy of information in all previous censuses did not allow analysis of agriculture in terms of its inherent potential and problems vis-à-vis current developments. We hope that, this time, the authorities will give due emphasis to data collection, keeping in mind that our agriculture is a part of global agriculture and, because of that, the database should be wider and more diversified.
An old debating issue is the classification norms of farm categories based only on land availability. Unfortunately, the concept still prevails. We have to see far it is accurate in the context of the changing scenario in the rural areas of the country. Some other criteria should be included in categorising farmers. Farm categories, based on only on land holdings, can be estimated by adjusting the data of previous censuses, as in the case of annual population growth data adjustment. Strictly speaking, we do not need a new census for this purpose, which was the dominating feature of all previous censuses.
My understanding is that our agriculture has to be broadly categorised into four groups: subsistence farming, semi-intensive farming, intensive farming, and commercial farming. Another option is to classify according to farming typology: hill farming, barind farming, coastal farming and flood plain farming systems. Classification of farming systems, as per rice growing eco-systems, seems to be another alternative.
The time has come to have a national consensus on this vital issue. A research program can be undertaken to look into the matter in more detail, and to come out with concrete proposals for deciding the best way to categorise farmers. It will be more useful and informative if we collect data following any one of the above-mentioned categories.
There has been a growing concern about the quality of the data, which is often not too accurate. This needs serious attention of the concerned authority. The problem is that ten-year intervals are too long for the poor farmers to remember changes in their agriculture because they do not keep written records.
The BBS has the responsibility of providing quality, and accurate, data gathered through the census. For this purpose, a technical monitoring team could be constituted, and some of the information could be verified again in order to reconfirm their quality. It can also be done through post-enumeration survey. Leaving it only to the enumerators and some other officials of upazila and district will not be enough to ensure its quality.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has been playing a significant role globally to assist developing countries in conducting their agriculture census. Bangladesh also received considerable support in the past from FAO in conducting the agriculture census. FAO provides both technical and financial assistance in this regard.
The idea to conduct a census after every ten years, as recommended by FAO, and most of the developing countries are following it still. The time has come to re-think about whether it would be appropriate to conduct this type of census at five-year, rather than ten-year, intervals in order to capture and record the rapidly changing scenario of our agricultural and rural development. In India, the agriculture census is conducted every five years.
Another important task is to provide commodity production statistics, which are the key components in forecasting production. Forecast of production is necessary for two reasons: to estimate the country’s food security situation and to make the country’s food budget. Without reliable data relating to crop yields and the area available for crops, forecasting production would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Along with agriculture census, census on agricultural inputs supply is also extremely important for boosting our agricultural production. To save resources and time, concerned authorities have to give due attention to this proposal. Otherwise, the current census will be a half-hearted exercise. To me, for some reasons, a census on input supply systems is more important than even agriculture census.
The time period (May 11-29) for the census does not seem to be appropriate as it is coincides with the harvesting of boro rice, which is going on full swing across the country. In this situation, farmers may not have spare time to give interviews.
Finally, the agriculture census is the largest statistical operation undertaken by the BBS. On the other hand, the BBS has limited manpower both at national and at grass-roots levels. In view of that, it is being conducted under a project fully funded by the government.
In future, we can take the help of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and Directorate of Food (FD). If BBS, DAE and FD could work together at grass-roots level in collecting information, it will solve much of our problems with regard to getting accurate information on the country’s agriculture situation.
