The World Programme for the Census of Agriculture (WCA) is an international programme led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that supports the implementation of national censuses of agriculture on a 10-year basis through the use of standard concepts, definitions and methodology. The WCA was developed in the years 1929–1930 by the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA). Governments from many countries agreed to promote a coordinated implementation of censuses of agriculture around the world on a basis as uniform as possible. The WCA 1929–1930 constituted the first world census of agriculture round and was implemented in about 60 countries. The subsequent 1940 round could not be completed due to the onset of World War II. Following the dissolution of the IIA in 1946, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) took over the programme and launched in 1948 the WCA 1950 as well as the successive decennial programmes. Seven decennial rounds – in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020 – have been promoted by FAO. The current WCA 2020 is the tenth decennial international census of agriculture round and covers the censuses of agriculture to be carried out by countries between 2016 and 2025.
Historical evolution of the WCA
Source: In the first two WCA rounds, 1930 and 1940, the IIA recommended a “standard form” for use by all countries referring to the same census period. At that time, there was a large gap in agricultural information. However, many countries found it difficult to conduct the census using a long questionnaire given the limited human and technological resources. Each subsequent programme was enriched with the experience of previous programmes from both the methodological and operational points of view. The WCA 1950, the first programme developed by FAO, brought forward the idea of collecting data on the structural characteristics of agriculture as the primary purpose of the census. This focus on the structural characteristics of agriculture still holds. The WCA 1950 recommended a short list of essential census items and an extended list with items of secondary importance. The 1950 programme also gave increased attention to the definitions of census items and the tabulation of internationally comparable results. The WCA 2020 programme featured the discussion of four methodological modalities for conducting a census of agriculture: the classical (one-off) approach; the modular approach, which was introduced in the WCA 2010; the integrated census/survey modality, involving rotating survey modules over the inter-census years; and the combined census modality, which uses administrative data. The programme made a clear distinction between ‘essential’ items and ‘frame’ items. In addition, other items, referred to as ‘additional’ items, were presented as optional. The WCA 2020 improved the approach for assessing the distribution of managerial decisions in the holding, useful for the collection of sex-disaggregated data. The programme included two new optional themes: “Fisheries” (capture fisheries activities conducted at household level) and “Environment/Green House Gases (GHG)” (basic agro-environmental data on GHG and ammonia emissions). Two more features of the WCA 2020 was, first, an increased emphasis on the use of information technology in data collection, processing and dissemination (e.g. CAPI, CAWI, the use of interactive online outputs and access to anonymised micro-data). Another feature was recommendations to ensure cost-effectiveness of the census of agriculture. The WCA 2020 was complemented by Operational guidelines, which provided practical guidance on the main stages involved in the preparation and implementation of the census of agriculture. == Country participation and documentation by WCA round ==
Country participation and documentation by WCA round
A repository of documents and metadata for censuses of agriculture undertaken since the WCA 1980 is available here . The repository includes a short country profile of the methodology, coverage and main results, while a global review of agricultural censuses was published in early 2021. For the current decennial census round that ends in 2025, the WCA 2020, preliminary information is available here . In early 2020, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) conducted a mid-term review of the plans and progress of national censuses of agriculture in the 2020 round. == Database on agricultural census data ==
Database on agricultural census data
In 2022, FAO endowed
FAOSTAT, the world's largest agricultural database, with a new domain that enables much easier comparison and assessment of trends over time of the agricultural structures of countries. == Census of agriculture microdata ==
Census of agriculture microdata
Starting with the WCA 2010 round (2005–2015), some countries provided access to anonymized census microdata (e.g. Armenia Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cook Islands, Estonia, France, Indonesia, Italy, Rep. of Korea, Lao DPR, Nepal, Namibia, the Netherlands, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland, Portugal, the Philippines, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Tanzania, Uruguay, USA and Viet Nam). The Food and Agriculture Microdata (FAM) Catalogue had links to ten census datasets available in countries’ websites as of March 2020. == The impact of COVID-19 on the implementation of WCA 2020 ==
The impact of COVID-19 on the implementation of WCA 2020
The pandemic affected planning and implementation of censuses of agriculture under the WCA 2020 round in both developed and developing countries. The extent of the impact varied according to the stages at which the censuses were, ranging from planning (i.e. staffing, procurement, preparation of frames, questionnaires), fieldwork (field training and enumeration) or data processing/analysis stages. == See also ==