FAO Highlights Reliable Data as Crucial for Sustainable Agriculture Development in ECO Region
At the opening session of a Regional Training Workshop on the FAO CountrySTAT being held at the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) headquarters today in Tehran, the FAO Representative to the Islamic Republic of Iran underscored that timely and reliable agricultural sector data is crucial for agriculture policy formulation and the promotion of sustainable agriculture development in Iran and ECO member countries.
The recent food crisis and ongoing debates on food price volatility, the progressively emerging adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture and the continued unacceptable high levels of food insecurity, have all unequivocally highlighted the shortcomings in available agricultural data and the urgent need for empirical figures on the basis of which relevant and effective policies could be implemented at the global, regional, and national levels.
The necessity for such data is becoming increasingly evident as many countries, especially in the developing world, lack the capacity to produce and report even the minimum set of agricultural data needed to monitor national trends or inform the international development debate.
Accordingly, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has continued to advocate the great importance that needs to be attributed to statistical information and to the capacity-building of member nations in this domain.
Throughout its history, FAO has been committed to the development and implementation of integrated systems of data and metadata on food and agriculture.
At the global level, FAO contributed to the establishment of FAOSTAT, the world's largest database on food and agriculture, covering over 200 countries and territories, and which constitutes today a reference for all users in the world. At the level of member nations, FAO has been advocating the embedding of CountrySTAT.
CountrySTAT is an internet-based and scalable system providing high quality statistical data and constituting a "one-stop centre" that is supported by a cutting-edge, state of the art, open-source, technology called FENIX.
The system enables researchers, policy-makers, development organizations and the private sector to design and implement better, evidence-based policies as well as sounder and more effective investments in agriculture.
In view of the specific benefits to be derived from CountrySTAT, FAO and the ECO Secretariat are calling upon the ECO member states to institute the system so as to reinforce the collection and harmonization of data from different sources and their integration in a common location.
The establishment of CountrySTAT in both the Islamic republic of Iran and the other ECO member countries will be a key preliminary step in addressing the current challenges facing their agricultural and rural sectors and in promoting sustainable food security throughout the region.