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MBABANE – The Agriculture Census on all rural areas and homesteads in the country will commence on December 19, 2022.

According to the government website, the census will be conducted by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) under the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development.

It was stated that the Census of Agriculture was designed to collect statistically sound, internationally comparable estimates of key indicators that were used to assess the situation of crop and livestock production.

The main objective of the census is to provide updated information on core national indicators to assist policy makers and programme implementers to monitor and evaluate existing programmes as well as the country’s achievement on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Government stated that the census would have two phases, while the first phase would commence on December 19, 2022 to January 28, 2023.

The first phase is said to be the listing stage where a set of questions would be collected from the respondents as they give answers to the questions being asked. This phase would distinguish between homesteads that do crop production and/or livestock production from homesteads that had no agricultural production.

The second phase would commence on March 1, 2023 to July 31, 2023.

This phase would be more detailed, as data collectors are expected to do measurements only on holdings and exclude the non-producing homesteads. This phase is done in stages, depending on the stage of the crops - more especially maize as the key crop.

Meanwhile, stage one which deals with area measurement, is where data collection would be measuring the size of the area cultivated, fallows and orchards.

Outcome

The outcome of this would be the determination statistics on cultivated crops and the land that was temporarily not cultivated in the current season.

Stage two, which is livestock production, would include counting the number of livestock, which were owned by the holders and also capture the amount of livestock products produced in the past 12 months.

Stage three, which is listed as crop cutting is the stage where data collectors would create a plot/s in the fields in order to measure the crop yields and crop production in the fields that were cultivated. The data collectors will harvest a portion of the fields for the purpose of measuring only and, once they are finished, the samples will be left for consumption by the holders.

One of the main objectives of