by
H. Som Chief, Statistical Development Services (ESSS) FAO
The weaknesses of statistics on root crop statitics are well known to data users and policy makers in agricultural development, as well as to producers of agricultural statistics. Details of the shortcomings are provided in a some of the papers presented at this Expert Consultation.
FAO has tried to identify the problems related to this area of statistics in a few meetings, but so far has not yet issued adequate guidelines on how to improve the situation. This Consultation is a renewed effort to address the numerous problems affecting the quality of data on root crops.
Purpose and Objectives
The present Expert Consultation is intended to review the shortcomings and document existing experiences in view of preparing a series of technical papers on methodology, possibly supported by case studies on selected country practices and/or results from controlled experiments. To this end, FAO has contacted a number of specialists to document the different aspects that might be of importance for methodology and to benefit from their experiences with (i) agronomic aspects of root crops, (ii) assessments of the performance of these crops, (iii) different uses made of related data and information, and (iv) root and tuber production estimates and forecasts.
The long-term objective of the current effort is to provide guidelines and methodology suitable for developing countries to make reasonable estimates of the production of root and tuber crops. The meeting will focus on five main root and tuber crops which are significant for Africa: cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, taro, and Irish potatoes. In this context, the present meeting will:
1. Review and discuss papers prepared in draft form by each of the participating experts in order to document relevant experiences/practices in the agronomy and assessment of roots and tubers;
2. Discuss and identify key parameters for a system capable of providing information and statistics on root and tuber crops;
3. Draw conclusions from the papers and discussions, and make recommendations leading to a plan of action to derive pragmatic method(s) for assessing root and tuber crops and obtaining estimates of their production, including field-testing of methodologies.
Outcomes Expected
The papers presented at this Expert Consultation will constitute useful resource material for future activities in the development of methodologies for data collection and use of root crop statistics.
The conclusions and recommendations will be extemely valuable to FAO in the determination of actions to be taken over the next few years covering different aspects of development and experimentation of methodologies in view of preparing guidelines on root crop statistics. It is expected that different components of such an action plan will come out from the contributions made by the Experts attending this forum.
