Agriculture Statistics Capacity Building Workshop

The Food and Agriculture Organization is the custodian agency responsible for developing and updating international methodologies and standards related to food and agriculture statistics. This includes: the World Programme for the Census of Agriculture (WCA); the 22 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators under FAO custodianship; guidelines related to agriculture surveys, fisheries statistics, food consumption; the food component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI); and the components of international classifications that are related to food and agriculture, including in the Central Product Classification (CPC), Harmonized System (HS) used for trade statistics and the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) of all economic activities.
These international methodologies, guidelines, and classifications are critical to enable the linkage of data across multiple sources. They are updated periodically to reflect economic, social and technological changes, though in a manner and with sufficient lag as to allow time trends to reflect actual phenomena rather than methodological changes. They are developed in consultations with experts from various subject matter areas and institutions, including national governments, international and regional organizations such as UN agencies, academia, non-governmental organizations and, where relevant, the private sector. They are presented to the UN Statistics Commission, representing over 180 UN member states, for final review and approval.
FAO contributes to development of international methodologies and guidelines and classifications, and leads this work with respect to agriculture and food statistics, to leverage its expertise and meet its constitutional mandate, which requires the organization to: “collect, analyze, interpret, and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture’, “promote and … recommend national and international action with respect to scientific, technological, social and economic research relating to nutrition, food and agriculture”; and “furnish such technical assistance as governments may request1.”