Opening access to statistics has numerous benefits, including enhancing research and evidence-based decision-making, improving relevance and quality of official statistics, reducing duplication in data collection, increasing returns on public investments, and ensuring compliance with fundamental principles and standards for dissemination of official statistics.

FAO works with partner countries at establishing and improving access to agricultural statistics by:

• Promoting data dissemination policies and programmes as part of institutional processes;
• Increasing accessibility to agricultural statistics through systematic dissemination;
• Improving dissemination practices for greater accessibility and usability of the data, including microdata.