Making Better Use of Agricultural Census Data to Understand Farmland Distribution
Lowder, Sarah et al.
Increasing the openness of information and data on agricultural land use in the developing world is important. We can do more to take advantage of complementarities among agricultural census data and other sources of information. And it is also important that we fully exploit data and information, such as that of agricultural censuses, in the forms in which they are currently available. For selected countries this paper compares the distribution of operated agricultural land found using living standard measurement surveys (LSMS) and that in the agricultural census reports. Existing analysis of agricultural censuses was, until recently, quite out of date and not globally representative. The paper presents the most comprehensive and complete global and regional analysis of agricultural census data on land use that has been undertaken. It provides estimates of the number and distribution of farms, small farms and family farms at global and regional levels and by country income groups. It considers what the findings on land distribution imply about whether smallholder or family farms are responsible for producing the majority of the worldds food. Finally the paper considers how agricultural censuses might further inform our knowledge of agricultural land use.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
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