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I. INTRODUCTION
The Food and Agriculture organization of the United
Nations, conscious of the basic importance of agricultural price
statistics, has, over the years, been active in promoting meetings
and seminars to discuss the utility of these statistics and to review
the current status of price collection in member countries. A list
of such meetings and seminars and a summary of the recommendations
made at each is shown in Appendix I.
In pursuance of the suggestions made at these various
meetings, the FAO agreed to work out international recommendations
on agricultural price statistics and to produce a technical manual
for the guidance of member countries. Such a document would describe
the procedures necessary for setting up a price collecting system,
including the essential preliminary surveys, the statistical treatment
and analysis of the data collected, and the subsequent calculations
of price index numbers. This present manual represents the results
of the efforts so far made to achieve these objectives.
Since the agricultural producer is both a seller of
his produce as well as a buyer of agricultural production requisites,
agricultural prices cover not only the prices ”received”
by farmers (”output” prices) but also the prices ”paid” by farmers
(”input” prices). The present manual deals with the collection and
compilation of both types.
The farmer is also, of course, a buyer of consumer
goods for use in his own household. Prices for such purchases are
not to be regarded as "agricultural prices”, and are not,
therefore, strictly within the coverage of this manual. Nevertheless,
Appendix V deals with the suggested statistical treatment of such
prices should the need for them arise.
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