The Expert Consultation on Root Crop Statistics was held from 3 to 6 December 2002 at the Sheraton Conference Center in Harare, Zimbabwe. The meeting was a joint effort of the Statistics Division in FAO Headquarters and the FAO Regional Office for Africa in Accra in close cooperation with the FAO Plant Production and Protection Division. The FAO Sub-Regional Office for Southern and Eastern Africa in Harare assisted in the organization and servicing of the meeting. The meeting was conducted in English.
The Consultation brought together ten experts from different Regions in the fields of agronomy, agricultural statistics and agricultural economy in order to benefit from their experience with the ultimate view of developing methodology for estimating and forecasting production of root and tuber crops. The Agenda of the Expert consultation is attached as Annex I, the list of papers presented as Annex II and the list of participants as Annex III of the present report.
For the sake of simplicity, the title of the Expert Consultation was kept short (Root Crop Statistics), but it is explicitly intended to cover both root and tuber crops, as well as paying attention to related products such as leaves and other edible parts of several of these crops.
The proceedings of the Expert Consultation consist of two volumes: Volume I covers the present Report of the meeting, (including abstracts of the papers presented) and was approved by the participants prior to the conclusion of the meeting. The Volume II contains the full text of the papers presented by the participants in either English or French, with abstracts in both languages. The two reports are also available on CD-ROM, with the addition of a selection of background papers and publications that were considered to be of relevance to the subject of the Consultation.
