New tool for structural data from agricultural censuses

Agricultural policymakers, researchers and broader rural development stakeholders can now take advantage of a powerful new data tool within the world’s largest agricultural  database hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

DG AGRI has been promoting a new public policy tool this month based on agricultural census data which was unveiled recently for FAOSTAT to complement its existing wealth of data on  production, trade and consumption in agricultural sectors. The FAO database’s new domain on Structural Data from Agricultural Censuses enables easier comparison and assessment of trends over time. It allows rapid access to figures about how many farms exist in a given country, what their sizes are, the tenure typology determining its ownership, the farmer’s gender, and how many people live and work on them, all sourced from national agricultural censuses.

European examples spotlighted by the FAO to underline the new tool’s possibilities include a reference to FAOSTAT data showing, for instance, that: 40% or more of all agricultural holdings are headed by women in Lithuania and Latvia but nowhere in the database is female ownership above 50%. In eight countries, all in Europe, 60% or more of farmland is rented rather than operated by owners, including France and Germany.