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Development Constraint to be Addressed:
The Direction of Agricultural Statistics (DAS) of
the Department of Statistics (DOS) is in charge of data production
on the agriculture sector. DOS conducted the last Agricultural Census
in 1997 and the first report was released in December 1999. While
this report gives access to some 50 basic tables, there is a need
for interpretation, analysis and dissemination of the census results
in a more user-friendly form to fully meet the users needs. Through
a network of 35 district-level staff, the Department of Information
and Computing (DIC) of the Ministry of Agriculture produces early
production estimates and forecasts for the internal use of the Ministry.
These estimates are available well before the release of data from
the annual surveys of DOS. This reporting system, the reliability
of which is unknown, generates a set of data not always in agreement
with data from the surveys conducted by DOS. The data produced by
DOS remain the official data on the agriculture sector in Jordan.
To overcome these development constraints related to the system
of food and agricultural statistics, the Government requested assistance
from FAO through the Technical Cooperation programme (TCP).
Development Objective:
The development objective of the assistance is to
strengthen the food and agricultural statistics system so that policy
and administrative decisions aimed at increasing agricultural production
and ensuring food security are based on reliable and up-to-date
information.
Immediate Objectives:
- to improve the access and use of the census data through the
analysis and widespread dissemination of the census results;
- to improve and upgrade the current system for data collection
in the agriculture sector to meet the priority needs of the data
users (user-driven system);
- to contribute to strengthening the national capacity for data
collection, processing and analysis of the agriculture sector.
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