Importance of statistics in the food business
Global market standards, best practices:
By Kundhavi Kadiresan
Like many, I remember the warnings of parents and teachers to never
count your chickens before they've hatched, and to never keep all your
eggs in one basket.
But moving beyond the clichés have you ever stopped to wonder just
how many chickens there are in Asia or the world? And how many eggs must
hens lay each day to feed us all?
These lighthearted questions in fact carry a serious message. If we
didn't know how many chickens we could produce or how many eggs they
could lay, our food value chains would begin to fall apart. The same
important facts must be known for all food produced. Supply must meet
demand.
We know counting is important for a myriad of reasons. We count the
number of people on the planet and we mathematically project a rise in
population - by 2050 the world's population is expected to grow by
another two billion topping out at more than nine billion - and we
rightly worry about whether we will be able to produce enough food to
feed everyone by then.
So ensuring that we can accurately count our
chickens or our sheep, while correctly predicting our supplies of rice,
fruits, vegetables and crops, is critical. Unfortunately, we don't
always get the count right and some countries are better than others
when it comes to collecting agricultural statistics. That's why it's
time to work together to improve the way we gather these statistics
worldwide.
Two major initiatives
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is working with
member countries and partners to improve these agricultural counts.
Since 1950, the FAO has been a leader in agricultural censuses by
providing technical guidance to countries that conduct their national
censuses every ten years. More recently, our member countries have asked
us to find ways to improve the methods of gathering statistics and to
provide guidance on sustainable production, livestock, forestry,
fisheries and how to analyze impacts from climate change.
To implement better practices on statistical gathering, and to share
best practices on agricultural and rural statistics between countries,
FAO and our partners are supporting two major initiatives. One is called
the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics and the
other is the World Program for the Census of Agriculture 2020 (WCA
2020). The Global Strategy provides the vision for national and
international statistical systems to meet 21st century challenges,
including poverty, food insecurity, global warming and the sustainable
use of land and water resources. The WCA 2020 is providing governments
with a new approach to comprehensive data collection on the structure of
agriculture and it facilitates international comparisons. A new global
census round is getting underway this year and, for the first time; it
will include aquaculture as well as capture fisheries. For national
policy makers to intervene in agricultural production, at the right time
and in the right place, they need reliable statistics. The data provided
by these national censuses will form the foundation for building better
systems that collect more recent and periodic information. For the first
time, this new round of censuses will look at the impacts that
greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions are having on agricultural
activities.
Valuable information
This month, professional statisticians and census leaders, who are
likely to play a role in the planning and execution of the next
agricultural census in their respective countries, are meeting in
Bangkok to discuss WCA 2020. Twenty one countries from Asia are
participating, including Sri Lanka.
But all this attention is about more than mere numbers and ways to
count. As mentioned, statistics are the foundation of world agriculture.
They underpin all agricultural decisions and work, and provide
valuable information to meet challenges such as food insecurity, poverty
and climate change. Let's not forget that agriculture provides the
primary source of food for humans, feed for animals, fibers for clothes,
and material for fuel and housing - all things needed by a growing world
population.
As we work together and with others to meet the world's Sustainable
Development Goals by 2030, the WCA 2020, implemented during 2016-25, has
the potential to help provide valuable data to ensure many SDG targets
will have been accurately met. We need to be sure that when shepherds
bless and count their sheep they will have arrived at an accurate tally.
To feed the world of our children and their children, we shouldn't count
our chickens before they hatch
The writer is the Assistant Director-General and Regional
Representative for Asia and the Pacific, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO). |