State Government has created State and district-level committees for smooth conduct of the census
State Government has created State and district-level committees for smooth conduct of the census
The 11th Agriculture Census, delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is expected to kick off by mid-November in Kerala as a full-scale exercise covering all local body wards.
The Agriculture Census Division of the Economics and Statistics Department, tasked with conducting the exercise, has completed the training of department officials who will act as supervisors. Sessions for nearly 7,000 enumerators hired to collect the data through field visits will soon begin.
Senior department officials hope that the census to be completed by January 2023.
In previous years, the five-yearly exercise was carried out as a sample survey, covering selected, 20% wards in local bodies. But this time, it will be a full-fledged exercise covering all the wards. The new format is expected to provide a more accurate and comprehensive picture of the sector.
In a first for this national-level exercise, enumerators will be using a mobile app specially designed by the National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT), Kolkata, to upload the data collected by them via smart phones, an official of the Economics and Statistics Department said.
As in previous years, the ‘operational holding’ will be treated as the statistical unit at micro-level for data collection as it is considered the basic unit where agriculture-related decisions are taken. An ‘operational holding’ is defined as ”all land used wholly or partly for agricultural production and is operated as one technical unit by one person alone or with others without regard to the title, legal form, size or location.”
The 10th Agriculture Census was conducted in the State in 2015-16, and the next one should have come in 2021-22, but the pandemic forced a delay.
Last week, the Planning and Economic Affairs Department issued orders creating a 12-member State-level coordination committee and eight-member District-Level Coordination Committees to secure the support of various government departments for the 11th Agriculture Census.
The State-level panel is chaired by the Additional Chief Secretary, Planning and Economic Affairs, designated as the State Agriculture Census Commissioner. This panel has the Director, Economics and Statistics Department, as its convener. At the district-level, the District Collector will act as the District Agriculture Census Officer.
The 2015-16 census had reported an increase of 11.02% in the total number of operational holdings in the State. The number of holdings went up from 68.31 lakh in 2010-11 to 75.83 lakh in 2015-16. But it noted a decrease in the area from 15.11 lakh hectares to 13.95 lakhs hectare (7.67%).
‘Operated area’ refers to both cultivated and uncultivated areas, provided part of it is under agricultural production.
The average size of operational holdings declined to 0.18 hectare in 2015-16 compared to 0.22 hectare in 2010-11. The 2015-16 census had also reported that the share of female operational holders had gone up from 19.61% in 2010-11 to 22.98%. Only 27% of the net area sown was found to be irrigated.
At the national level, Agriculture Census has been held every five years since 1970-71 in line with the broad guidelines of the decennial World Census of Agriculture evolved by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
