FAO revamps its statistical system

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New FAOSTAT to better serve users

27 July 2006, Rome - The FAO announced today the launch of its new FAOSTAT system. It is the first revision of the system in more than a decade.

“We have redeveloped FAOSTAT to better serve our users and give them more time for analysis,” the Director of FAO’s Statistics Division, Haluk Kasnakoglu, said.

“The new FAOSTAT consists of an integrated core database and satellite databases feeding and supporting it. The thematic databases cover areas such as agricultural production, consumption, trade, prices and resources,” Mr Kasnakoglu also said.

The new FAOSTAT is already available from the FAO website. It comes with complete global coverage, cross-domain integration, a fully refined user interface and increased data transparency.

A new national version, CountrySTAT, has been under development and is being released in a score of pilot countries. It will offer a two-way bridge between national and international statistics on food and agriculture.

10 million records downloaded every day

FAOSTAT is currently the world’s largest and most comprehensive statistical database on food and agriculture. It contains over 1 billion data points, 40 million of which are updated annually.

The current core of FAOSTAT contains a full matrix of integrated and compatible statistics coverage of 200 countries, a period of 15 years, and more than 200 primary products and input items.

The FAOSTAT site receives over 10 000 daily hits and 10 million records are downloaded every day. “This is a twenty-fold increase just over the last 5 years,” Mr Kasnakoglu indicated.

Contact:
Pierre Antonios
Media Relations, FAO
pierre.antonios@fao.org
(+39) 06 570 53473
(+39) 348 25 23807

Contact:

Pierre Antonios
Media Relations, FAO
pierre.antonios@fao.org
(+39) 06 570 53473
(+39) 348 252 3807

Related links
	The new FAOSTAT system

What’s new about FAOSTAT?

Edward Gillin of FAO’s Basic Food and Agriculture Statistics Service answers questions.

Q.- What’s new about the FAOSTAT system?
A.- FAOSTAT has been modernized to provide an updated tool for data compilation, validation, estimation for both dissemination and analysis. It has been integrated with a new statistical meta-data system and revised methodologies to ensure that data quality standards are applied consistently throughout all the data sets. It also provides an enhanced data tool for facilitating user access to data. It is the first major technical update of the database in more than a decade.

Q.- Who are FAOSTAT’s users?
A. The major users of FAOSTAT are first of all economists, both in FAO and member-country governments, and then the business community – merchants, bankers, brokers, traders and agricultural producers.

Q.- What are the applications?
A.- FAO data is used for agricultural sector and trade analysis/understanding, as well as forecasting. It helps decisions makers to make the right calls while at the same time is part of knowledge transfer.

Q.- Is there a charge for this?
A.- In the past, bulk data download service was available only on subscription. We will open the whole database to all users free of charge for a whole month after the launch. After that we will re-introduce paid subscription for bulk-downloading and heavy usage while maintaining free access for most users. We’re studying making the data available on a pay-per-view basis, much like you can buy a single article from a newspaper archives.
(Interview by Chris Matthews)

FAO

The FAOSTAT site receives over 10 000 daily hits.

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