Workshop participants pictured during the training. ©FAO

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has kicked off a weeklong provincial level training workshop aimed at strengthening national capacity on analysis and interpretation of agricultural statistics and data. The workshop has been organized in collaboration with the National Institute of Statistics, the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and seeks ultimately to contribute to enhanced and informed agricultural planning and policy decision-making.

Accurate and timely statistics are key to informing decisions, policies and investments aimed at addressing issues related to food and agriculture. They provide reliable information on the performance of the agriculture sector, which contributes to more than 20 percent of the Cambodia’s gross domestic product and employs around a third of the population. Furthermore, knowledge of the latest and best agricultural statistics and analysis is critical, considering the prevailing challenges affecting the agriculture sector such as climate change impacts, natural disasters, pests and disease outbreaks and land degradation.

“It is important for Cambodia to have knowledge of the latest and best agricultural statistics and analysis to cope with the changing environment and demands of the agriculture sector. This workshop will specifically enhance the capacity of participants in using province-level agricultural statistics for better informed local planning. This type of analysis can then be used to identify areas of the country that are lagging behind in terms of agricultural development and to target government programs in those areas,” Todd Hunkin, International Statistician at FAO said during the opening session of the workshop.

The workshop is targeting members of the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) Provincial Departments of Planning and Provincial Departments of Agriculture who are at the frontlines of data collection.  Participants from all 25 of the country’s provinces participated in the training, which kicked off in Kampong Cham province on 31 July 2023.

The workshop is providing practical and hands on sessions introducing tools and templates, which participants will use in their work. It will also introduce concepts and methods of analysis and familiarize participants with free and open-source software to enable validating and cleaning of raw data produced during data collection, data visualization, statistical analysis, and creation of reports.

His Excellency Hor Darith, Secretary of State, Ministry of Planning emphasized the importance of ongoing statistical capacity development during his workshop opening remarks and requested regular compilation of agricultural statistics data within provincial areas for further official use. He expressed the RGCs commitment to providing both technical and financial support for the implementation of this important training, as well as for agricultural surveys, to continue strengthening the quality and efficiency of the national statistical system.

Mounting of the training recognizes not only the need for enhanced knowledge and skills, but also existing challenges in which such skills must be put to use. Such challenges include the diversity and scale of the agriculture sector in Cambodia. At the same time, it builds on strides that have been made in collection of data since the implementation of the annual Cambodia agriculture survey (CAS) in 2019.

The CAS is an annual survey of approximately 16 000 household agricultural holdings in Cambodia. It produces data on agricultural activities representative to the national, regional and provincial level. During the training, the participants are using the most up-to-date agricultural statistics from the Cambodia Agriculture Survey 2021 (CAS 2021) - to be publicly disseminated later this year- to understand the current agricultural environment within their respective provinces.

As part of its ongoing support to government, FAO statistical work in Cambodia prioritizes capacity development through its support of the 50x2030 Initiative to Close the Agricultural Data Gap as well as through technical support on the decennial Agriculture Census of Cambodia, which held data collection fieldwork earlier this year. FAO supports these two large-scale agricultural data collection activities by developing standards, and supporting analysis, reporting and dissemination of results. Government of Cambodia to achieve the goals set out in its Second National Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition 2019-2023.