Survey to direct Kingdom’s agriculture development, SDGs
Survey to direct Kingdom’s agriculture development, SDGs
The Cambodia Agricultural Survey (CAS) Data Collection 2024 will become the basis and input for the development of agricultural policies and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the country.
This was stated by Bin Trachhey, the Minister of Planning, at the Training of Trainers (ToT) course on Cambodia Agricultural Survey Data Collection 2024, organized by the National Institute of Statistics of the Ministry of Planning (MoP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
According to the minister, the five-day training course from November 4 to 8, 2024 is indispensable to update the agricultural data series, which reflects the agricultural information data, economic and social, environment data, labor force in agriculture, food security of agricultural households and types of characteristics of agricultural structure.
“The Agricultural Survey 2024 aims to update the annual agricultural statistics data to meet the growing demand for data from the ministries and institutions of the Royal Government of Cambodia, especially for agricultural development policies and indicators to support Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and better economic, environmental and social development policies,” he said.
The leaders and experts of the National Institute of Statistics of MoP, MAFF, FAO and especially the Ministry of Economy and Finance have cooperated and supported both technically and financially in carrying out the survey work for the Cambodian Agricultural Census 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 until achieving successful results and accurate data with quality and reliability, Trachhey said.
Analysis of the results of the Cambodia Agricultural Survey Data 2021, 2022 and 2023 for dissemination to consumers, scheduled for December 2024, will provide important input for agricultural policymakers and economic-agricultural analysis to contribute to the development of the nation, improve the lives of the people even better, he added.
Notably, the ToT is attended by FAO experts and programm coordinators who have experience in agricultural survey and use of survey software on tablets and trainees as trainers, specialist in statistical data from the National Institute of Statistics of the MoP, and MAFF.
At the same time, the Planning Minister called for the trainees who will be the trainers for agricultural survey at the sub-national level to pay close attention to the lessons and the presentations of as well as to discuss the questions and be present in this training regularly.
The minister also urged them to maintain good discipline to get knowledge, skills and real experience so that they can later train and interview officers in the 25 provinces for the operation and also to record agricultural household data to be more efficient and ensure better data quality.
Recently, in an innovative leap forward, FAO has also broken new ground by training Cambodia’s National Institute of Statistics – MoP and MAFF to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into its agricultural statistics work.
This initiative marked a significant milestone as it stands as the first AI training that FAO has undertaken globally, with the aim of empowering a government’s statistical office with the latest AI technologies and the use of large language models. Hosted over three days from 13 to 15 March 2024,
the Introduction to AI training program started a journey towards revolutionizing the way agricultural data is collected, analysed, and utilized in Cambodia.
