Improving Agricultural Statistics in the COMCEC Region
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Scope of Agricultural Statistics:
 System of National Accounts (SNA) and its satellite account Economic Accounts for
Agriculture (EAA), which provides international standards for concepts, definitions, and
classifications of economic activities, set the guidelines for the economic dimension of
agricultural statistics.
 System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) is a satellite
account of the SNA, which sets the guidelines for the environmental dimension of
agricultural statistics.
 Food Balance Sheets (FBS) and Supply Utilization Accounts (SUA) provide a partial
framework by covering the (consumption and food security) consumer welfare side of the
social dimension. Unfortunately there is no internationally accepted standard for social
statistics as a whole.
Coverage of Agricultural Statistics
 An agricultural holding is the basic unit for economic statistics. The basic unit for social
statistics is the household, while the proper unit for environmental statistics is the land
parcel. The challenge will be to cover and link these statistical units.
 Agricultural statistics should cover enterprises that service agriculture, such as input
suppliers, processors, and transporters of agricultural goods. While these economic units
are outside the conceptual framework for agriculture, they do provide information on
prices and quantities that are important for economic and environmental accounts.
 Agricultural statistics need to take into account the seasonality and heterogeneity of
agricultural production. These issues create fundamental requirements for current, timely,
and accurate measures of production and micro-data.
Figures 1 and 2 present simple diagrams of how different dimensions of agricultural statistics
are interrelated and how they can be linked. Basically, the economic accounts involve the
output quantities and prices to compute value of output and input quantities and prices to
compute the costs of production. The difference is the value added which is the principle
output of economic accounts. The food account is basically how supply is utilized for food.
Food consumption is food production + imports - exports - non-food use-increase in stocks-
waste. It therefore requires the linkage of resource, trade and economic accounts. The heart of
environment accounts is the resource utilization accounts which relate resource availability to
resource use, trade and unemployment.