The 'Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics' is a ground-breaking effort to strengthen agricultural statistics (World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and United Nations Statistical Commission, 2011). The Global Strategy is a framework for national and international statistical systems that will enable them to produce, and to apply, the basic data and information needed in the twenty-first century.

The recent food crisis and the ongoing debates on food price volatility, the impact of climate change on agriculture and food security highlight the weaknesses in available agricultural data. The Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics is a ground-breaking effort to strengthen agricultural statistics. It provides the framework essential to meeting the current and emerging data requirements and the demands of policy makers and other data users so that they can fill these urgent needs. This report describes the goals and purposes of the Global Action Plan, and provides the proposed global, regional and national governance structures. It examines the linkages of the Plans technical components including country assessments, the technical assistance plan, the training plan and the research plan, and then outlines the process, assessment of resources, and timeline required for technical assistance, training and research. The report concludes with an overview of the implementation procedures and the monitoring, evaluation, and reporting requirements.

Policy makers and development practitioners who are responsible for developing investment strategies to promote economic growth find many challenges in the changing face of agriculture in the twenty-first century. In addition to its productive role of providing food, clothing, fuel, and housing for a growing world population, agriculture assumes other roles, the importance of which has more recently been recognized. In addition to its essential role in food security, agricultural development is now seen as a vital and high-impact source of poverty reduction. It is also seen as a source of environmental problems and a contributor to global warming, water scarcity and pollution, and land degradation. At the same time its potential as a source of environmental services needs to be defined, monitored, and evaluated. Many of the issues facing the sector transcend national boundaries. The Global Strategy is the result of an extensive consultation process with national and international statistical organizations as well as with agriculture ministries and other governmental institutions represented in Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) governing bodies. Considerable input came from the United Nations statistical commission friends of chair working group and the 2009 meetings of the International Statistical Institute in Maputo and Durban. Other collaboration involved the FAO Biannual conference and discussions at the regional commissions on agricultural statistics attended by national directors of agricultural statistics, the World Bank peer review process, and the development of a Wikipedia web page to collect inputs from the statistical community. The purpose of the global strategy is to provide a framework for national and international statistical systems that enables them to produce and to apply the basic data and information needed to guide decision making in the twenty-first century. This paper presents the overall strategy. It provides a ground-breaking effort to improve agricultural statistics that has implications for other sectors in the national statistical system. While it took many years for agriculture statistics to deteriorate to their current state, the implementation of the strategy provides a fresh start.

The recent food crisis and the ongoing debates on food price volatility, the impact of climate change on agriculture and food security highlight the weaknesses in available agricultural data. The Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics is a ground-breaking effort to strengthen agricultural statistics. It provides the framework essential to meeting the current and emerging data requirements and the demands of policy makers and other data users so that they can fill these urgent needs. This report describes the goals and purposes of the Global Action Plan, and provides the proposed global, regional and national governance structures. It examines the linkages of the Plan s technical components including country assessments, the technical assistance plan, the training plan and the research plan, and then outlines the process, assessment of resources, and timeline required for technical assistance, training and research. The report concludes with an overview of the implementation procedures and the monitoring, evaluation, and reporting requirements."

The Royal Government of Bhutan (RGB) hosted the Twenty-Sixth Session of the Asia and Pacific Commission on Agricultural Statistics (APCAS) convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Thimphu, Bhutan from 15 to 19 February 2016. The session was attended by 76 participants including 50 delegates from APCAS member countries viz. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, Republic of Korea (ROK), Thailand, the United States of America (USA) and Viet Nam. Four observers from the Maldives, Samoa, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the ASEAN Food Security Information System (AFSIS), and 16 staff from FAO also attended.