Wye City Group

Statistics on rural development and agriculture household income

The main objective of the Wye City Group is the promotion of the refinement and adoption of international standards in statistics for rural areas and agriculture household incomes. Statisticians and economists in national statistical offices, especially in North America, Western Europe, and in multilateral institutions have an established, shared interest in improving methods for collecting data on rural development, communities, and farm and non-farm households.

Such information is becoming of increasing importance as policy for agriculture broadens, as rural issues rise up the political agenda, and as the structure of farming and rural areas evolves.

Objectives

• to consider challenges to consistency of adoption of comparable methods of data collection across countries;
  
• to give special focus to the application and value of the data standards in developing countries, especially as it may support the construction of indicators for the Millennium Development Goals;
  
• to assess and explore the potential for the use of improved statistics as policy-relevant indicators and in empirical analysis of policies for farm and rural households, natural resources, and regional economic development;
  
• to determine the need for any changes or updating to the handbook and, if indicated, organize and execute the revision.