When David Lubin, the founder of the former International Institute of Agriculture, reviewed the world statistical service available to governments at the beginning of this century he saw a great gap which was as important to merchants and traders as to farmers. In all countries With an export surplus of agricultural produce the price the farmer received for his crop was controlled by the world price. Yet at that time there were no reliable statistics of world production and trade and although the highly-developed countries had sound national statistical services, many countries, among them some of the major producers of agricultural commodities, had only the most rudimentary means of collecting crop, price, and other statistics. The statistical work he began in 1904 has led to enormous improvement of world statistics, and FAO's work today in agricultural, forestry and fisheries statistics owes a great deal to this half-century of experience.
As FAO develops and as the statistical services of Member Governments improve, new demands are made and met by the Organization and every year the Monthly Bulletin, the Commodity Reports and the Yearbooks of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries further establish theme-elves as indispensable works of reference.
The annual YEARBOOKS OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS, of which the 1952 edition in two volumes has just been published, is a standard reference work for producers, exporters and importers of all kinds of agricultural products This new edition includes details on land use, irrigation, population food supply and prices, as well as sections on means of production which includes statistics on commercial fertilizers farm machinery and pesticides.
The demand for the YEARBOOK OF FOREST PRODUCTS STATISTICS 1953 (edition due soon) increases every year. (The 1947 edition is out of print in Rome, hut is still available from stocks held by sales agents). The last, 1952, edition covers roundwood (fellings of softwood and hardwood) sawlogs and veneer logs, pulpwood, pitprops, utilization of homegrown and imported roundwood processed wood and woodpulp and pulp products. It is a practical reference work for producers and traders. Periodical forestry commodity reports are published in FAO'S quarterly UNASYLVA.
Both the above yearbooks have their predecessors in the lists of the former International Institute of Agriculture; hut FAO is a pioneer in the field of fisheries statistics and the biennial YEARBOOK OF FISHERIES STATISTICS for this reason has probably shoun much more rapid development and improvement than the other two The l& test edition (YEARBOOK OF FISHERIES STATISTICS, 1950-51) still modestly looks forward to further improvements in future editions, but it now is the only world-wide source of reliable statistical information which makes international comparison of figures possible.
The YEARBOOK OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS can be kept up-to-date by subscribing to the MONTHLY BULLETIN OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS. This Bulletin, now in its second volume, has developed considerably in the scope of the statistics offered and by the publications not only of regular Commodity Notes, but also of articles On subjects of general interest to agricultural and fisheries economists. (Fisheries statistics are published in this bulletin and separates are sent to subscribers to the FAO FISHERIES BULLETIN).
Many of the articles deal with aspects of the FAO Program. The results of the 1950 World Agricultural Census are published in the bulletin as they become available and an article is devoted to the whole subject of this project. Articles on random sampling, international index numbers of agricultural production the emergency food reserve proposals, and regional meetings, targets and agricultural development, all fall into this group of subjects.
Articles of regional interest cover the Near and Far East, Western Europe and New Zealand, and general articles on agricultural development deal with public financing, training in economic appraisal, and the problems of planning agricultural projects.
Of particular interest are basic worldwide studies of most agricultural commodities which appear in the Commodity Bulletin Series. This series is supplemented by shorter and more current Commodity Reports, and by a new series of analytical studies of commodity policies. (These clear with such subjects as the long term contract the economics of the International Wheat Agreement, national price-control policies, and so on.) The Commodity Series and the Commodity Reports cover most fibers (including silk), fats and oils, grains (including of course, rice), livestock and meat, dairy products, poultry and eggs, tobacco citrus and dried fruits, sugar, cocoa and fertilizers.
