The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture facilitated a workshop on agricultural census methodology and questionnaire pre-test in support of the Technical Assistance for Planning of Agricultural Census of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Project.
At a four-day session held at the Kingstown Methodist Church Hall, Mrs Nerissa Gittens-McMillian, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture gave opening remarks. She outlined, “we are here to work on an Agriculture Census, which will chart the way and assist us to do things better.”
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture also highlighted that “the census will give us the capacity to know what we have and how best we can use it, whether in terms of crops, livestock and fisheries.”
Every ten years the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations develops and promotes the World Programme for the Census of Agriculture, a set of international guidelines, which provide the basis for the planning, implementation and dissemination of agriculture censuses.
The use of these guidelines by FAO member countries ensures that the census results are harmonized and internationally comparable, and allows countries to benchmark their performance against others.
The workshop was comprised of two different, yet related outputs of the project.
- Government staff members capable of implementing and supervising the census are trained in census methodology, data collection using CAPI and census operation.
- Agricultural census instruments (listings, questionnaire, field manual, tabulation plan) are established and tested.
The overarching objective of the workshop was to build the capacities of national officers in census methodology, data collection and census operation. An overview of the Census of Agriculture and Fisheries 2024 was presented with the steps to implement it.
The workshop served the discussion in detail of the context of the questionnaire of Census of Agriculture and Fisheries 2024, along with the proposed tabulation plan. The workshop also provided the opportunity to finalize the upcoming pre-test of census instruments.
Mr Maxime Luciéné, FAO Sub-Regional Statistician for the Caribbean said that the FAO recommends that “a census of agriculture should be conducted at least every ten years”.
Mrs Crina Turtoi, FAO International Expert in Agricultural Census facilitated the interactive sessions of the workshop.
