(Item 5 of the Agenda)
29. Mr Dissanayake, Director, Agricultural Statistics Division, Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka, presented the paper on the preparation of Food Balance Sheets (FBS), with special reference to Sri Lanka. He explained to the Experts that an FBS presented a comprehensive picture of a country's food supply for a specific period. An annual FBS tabulated over a period of years showed the trends of food supply from domestic sources as well as outside sources and changes that have taken place in the type of food consumed, i.e. pattern of diets, and adequacy in relation to nutritional requirements. The FBS was a useful tool in many agricultural policy concerns, viz: raising production levels, reducing import dependency ratio (proportion of requirement met through imports), formulation of nutritional plans, and ensuring food security.
30. The attention of the Experts was drawn to the sources of data and to the conceptual problems related to the FBS and it was noted that the basic data obtained from different sources suffered from many inconsistencies. Understanding that the concepts underlying these data sources were not always in conformity with the FBS requirements, the Experts observed that it would be necessary to make adjustments in basic data and to prepare estimates, wherever necessary, with a view to improving the reliability of FBS.
31. Mr Dissanayake mentioned that the main limitation of FBS was that it indicated only food availability, not actual consumption. He noted that FBS prepared for FAO by many countries was still limited to rough estimates because of lack of adequate data, and that the estimates of some items for Sri Lanka, essentially for livestock and minor crops, were not based on objective surveys, but were made through indirect means, largely based on secondary (subjective) data.
32. Given these observations, the Experts recommended that, as reliable information on food availability was a prerequisite for ensuring food security, it was important for countries without FBS to start the compilation of the FBS on the basis of available sources of data on production, trade, wastage, and other information.
33. They recommended that since reliable information on horticultural crops was virtually non-existent in many countries, efforts should be made to improve estimates of horticultural crops through alternative sources like household income and expenditure surveys.
34. The Experts recommended that parameters such as the percentage of wastage should be updated through periodic surveys so as to capture the technological developments in agricultural operations, particularly harvesting and post-harvesting operations including transportation of crops to markets, factories, etc.
35. Naoki MINAMIGUCHI, Vulnerability Analysis Coordinator, reported on the use of household survey data in Cambodia to illustrate how quantitative analyses (principle components and non-hierarchical clustering analyses) of household records available from a socio-economic survey could help understand important characteristics or profiles of the food insecure and vulnerable in Cambodia. Consumption analysis proved to be one of the most suitable approaches in Cambodia as the household survey data set provided information on main diet composition patterns, in spite of many internal inconsistencies and errors in the data sets. The diet composition patterns derived from the data set showed their strength in profiling the vulnerable in all three geographic areas - Phnom Penh, Other Urban and Rural areas - more than any other indicators used in the study.
36. In his presentation he also addressed serious data problems that hampered analyses and affected the quality of outcomes of the studies. He discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the analytical method, and concluded by outlining some limitations of the analysis that must be fully understood by government officials who were responsible for conducting a new round of the household socio-economic survey implemented in 2004-05. He said that such problems must be resolved to improve the present vulnerable group profiles and ultimately to undertake effective interventions required for alleviating poverty and vulnerability in the country.
37. The definitions of poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity used in the study in Cambodia were also discussed. These definitions were often used interchangeably in various case studies. In the study in Cambodia, however, the poverty incidence was treated as an input for measuring vulnerability to food insecurity. In addition, undernutrition rather than malnutrition was used as the latter includes both overnutrition and undernutrition situations. It was also pointed out that poor survey design and data collection methods would substantially impact outcome results. Lastly, Mr Minamiguchi stressed the need for national statistical organizations to carry out systematic analysis on raw data to detect errors rather than simply conducting tabulation analysis on aggregated data.
