FILLING DATA GAPS IN AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS 1994/95 - 2005/06

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), formerly FOS, has for long had a running battle with users of Agricultural Statistics either due to delays in the release of survey results or non-availability of data relevant to users’ needs.  The first problem has received attention in the last couple of years with the successful execution of three collaborative surveys of socio-economic activities in Nigeria; 2004, 2005 and 2006 among the NBS, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

            Earlier efforts to address the second problem have met with minimal success with the result that at the commencement of this project, a gap of about ten years existed in the series of Agricultural Statistics (1994/95 – 2003/04).  The need to close this gap both at the national and state levels has necessitated this project.

            After visiting the states’ Ministries of Agriculture (for administrative data) and the states’ Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) for data from their Crop Area and Yield Surveys (CAYS), coupled with experiences of yields per hectare (YPHs) from previous NBS surveys, the project team has been able to come up with reasonable estimates on certain aspects of peasant farming in the crop sub-sector of Agriculture, spanning 12 years.

            The project report is in six sections.  Section 1 deals with the introduction; role of Agriculture in the nation’s economy, past experiences in agricultural surveys, the scopes of these surveys and what led to the present problem that is now being addressed.

            Benefits to be derived from this project are enumerated in section 2.  Data collection methodology is covered in section 3.  Here, sources of data, their shortcomings, and procedures adopted in overcoming the deficiencies are given in detail.

            The various statistical measures employed to impute for missing data and the modes of data processing are covered in section 4 under “data processing methodology”.