National Agricultural Sample Census Pilot (Private Farmer) Livestock and Poultry-2007

The programme for the World Census of Agriculture 2000 is the eighth in the series for promoting a global approach to agricultural census taking. The first and second programmes were sponsored by the International Institute for Agriculture (IITA) in 1930 and 1940. Subsequent ones up to 1990 were promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO). FAO recommends that each country should conduct at least one agricultural census in each census programme decade and its programme for the World Census of Agriculture 2000 for instance corresponds to agricultural census to be undertaken during the decade 1996 to 2005. Many countries do not have sufficient resources for conducting an agricultural census. It therefore became an acceptable practice since 1960 to conduct agricultural census on sample basis for those countries lacking the resources required for a complete enumeration.

In Nigeria's case, a combination of complete enumeration and sample enumeration is adopted whereby the rural (peasant) holdings are covered on sample basis while the modern holdings are covered on complete enumeration. The project named “National Agricultural Sample Census” derives from this practice. Nigeria through the National Agricultural Sample Census (NASC) participated in the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's programmes of the World Census of Agriculture. Nigeria failed to conduct the Agricultural Census in 2003/2004 because of lack of funding. The NBS regular annual agriculture surveys since 1996 had been epileptic and many years of backlog of data set are still unprocessed. The baseline agricultural data is yet to be updated while the annual regular surveys suffered set back. There is an urgent need by the governments (Federal, State, LGA), sector agencies, FAO and other International Organizations to come together to undertake the agricultural census exercise which is long overdue. The conduct of 2006/2008 National Agricultural Sample Census Survey is now on course with the pilot exercise carried out in the third quarter of 2007.

The National Agricultural Sample Census (NASC) 2006/08 is imperative to the strengthening of the weak agricultural data in Nigeria. The project is phased into three sub-projects for ease of implementation; the Pilot Survey, Modern Agricultural Holding and the Main Census. It commenced in the third quarter of 2006 and to terminate in the first quarter of 2008. The pilot survey was implemented collaboratively by National Bureau of Statistics.

The main objective of the pilot survey was to test the adequacy of the survey instruments, equipments and administration of questionnaires, data processing arrangement and report writing. The pilot survey conducted in July 2007 covered the two NBS survey system-the National Integrated Survey of Households (NISH) and National Integrated Survey of Establishment (NISE). The survey instruments were designed to be applied using the two survey systems while the use of Geographic Positioning System (GPS) was introduced as additional new tool for implementing the project.

The Stakeholders workshop held at Kaduna on 21st-23rd May 2007 was one of the initial bench marks for the take off of the pilot survey. The pilot survey implementation started with the first level training (training of trainers) at the NBS headquarters between 13th - 15th June 2007. The second level training for all levels of field personnels was implemented at headquarters of the twelve (12) concerned states between 2nd - 6th July 2007. The field work of the pilot survey commenced on the 9th July and ended on the 13th of July 07. The IMPS and SPSS were the statistical packages used to develop the data entry programme.